The opinion
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS
VESAL YAGHOOBI,
Plaintiff,
No. 23-cv-12464-DLC
v.
TUFTS MEDICAL CENTER, INC;
TUFTS MEDICINE, INC.;
POINT32HEALTH, INC.;
PHYSICIAN HEALTH SERVICES,
INC.; MATTHEW SHORTELLE, JD;
KARI ROBERTS, MD; ADNAN
QAMAR, MD; ZAHRA JALALI, MD;
JUSTIN POPSO, MD; GLENN
BAUMANN, MD; JESSICA BROWN,
RN; MICHELE HAGAN, LICSW;
and SOTHY SOEUM,
Defendants.
ORDER ON DEFENDANTS’ MOTION TO DISMISS (D.48)
CABELL, U.S.M.J.
Vesal Yaghoobi (“Yaghoobi” or “the plaintiff”) has brought an
action against multiple entities arising from interactions she had
at Tufts Medical Center on or around August 24, 2023. Two of the
defendants, Point32Health, Inc. d/b/a Tufts Health Plan
(“Point32Health”), and Tufts Medical Center employee Sothy Soeum
(“Soeum”) (collectively the “Point32 defendants”), move pursuant
to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) to dismiss the amended
complaint against them for failure to state a valid claim. The
motion is granted for the reasons explained below.
I. Relevant Background
Accepting the amended complaint’s salient allegations as true
for purposes of the motion to dismiss, Yaghoobi was at all relevant
times a third-year pathology resident at Tufts Medical Center
(“Tufts”). In early August 2023 she1 discovered what she believed
to be “systematic medical fraud” within Tufts, including “non-
standard medical notes and pathology specimens.”
On August 23, 2023, after noticing “significant
discrepancies” between a specimen she was studying and the notes
relating to the specimen, she conveyed her concerns to Chief
Resident Adnan Qamar, who dismissed her concerns.
Yaghoobi then discovered the next day, August 24th, that her
ID badge had been deactivated and that Tufts had revoked her access
to her work email. Immediately thereafter, Yaghoobi was taken to
an emergency room at Tufts Medical Center, involuntarily placed
under psychiatric observation and forced to undergo a mental health
evaluation. Yaghoobi’s records were also manipulated to reflect
that her admission was voluntary.
As it relates to Point32, referred to in the amended complaint
as Tufts Health Plan, they reportedly called the plaintiff “shortly
1 The amended complaint refers to Yaghoobi in one part using masculine
pronouns but elsewhere uses female pronouns. The court understands the use
of female pronouns to be correct and proceeds that way here.
2
after” the incident -- it is unclear whether this was the same day
or the next day -- and left her a voicemail. In it, they asked
how she was doing and provided their contact information in case
she wanted to return the call. Regarding defendant Sothy Soeum,
the amended complaint contains no specific allegations against her
but the original complaint avers that she is the Tufts Health Plan
employee who left Yaghoobi the voicemail asking how she was doing,
and the court presumes that this is the basis for any claim against
Soeum.
Against this backdrop, the amended complaint asserts many
claims against many entities but only two claims against these two
defendants. Count Four alleges that both defendants conspired
(along with others) to “falsely label the plaintiff with a mental
health issue,” in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 241; and (2) Count Eight
alleges that Point32Health (but not Soeum) committed medical
malpractice through the use of “wrongful hospitalization, false
documentation, and unauthorized patient care practices.”
II. Legal Standard
To survive a motion to dismiss under Rule 12(b)(6), a
plaintiff must provide “enough facts to state a claim [for] relief
that is plausible on its face.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6); Bell
Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 547 (2007). The facts,
accepted as true, must “allow the court to draw the reasonable
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inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged.”
Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009). Additionally, the
allegations must be “more than an unadorned, the-defendant-
unlawfully-harmed-me accusation” and must show more than “a sheer
possibility that a defendant has acted unlawfully.” Id. Pro se
litigants are held to a relaxed pleading standard “to avoid
inappropriately stringent rules and unnecessary dismissals.”
Sergentakis v. Channell, 272 F.Supp.3d 221, 224 (D. Mass. 2017).
However, “this cannot be taken to mean that pro se complaints are
held to no standard at all.” Id. at 224-225.
III. Analysis
A. Count Four – Violation of 18 U.S.C. § 241.
Yaghoobi claims that the Point32 defendants conspired with
others to label her as mentally ill to hide Tuft’s fraudulent
practices, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 241 (Section 241). Section
241 makes it a crime for any person to conspire with another person
to “injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person” who is
freely exercising or enjoying their constitutional rights. See 18
U.S.C. § 241.
The defendants advance three arguments why Count Four fails
to state a viable claim: (1) Section 241 does not provide for a
private right of action; (2) the amended complaint does not allege
facts evincing a conspiracy; and (3) federal law expressly permits
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health insurers to possess and make use of a patient’s private
health information. It is not necessary to consider the
defendants’ second and third arguments because the first disposes
of the plaintiff’s claim.
As the defendants argue, Section 241 does not provide for a
private cause of action. Rather, Section 241 is a federal,
criminal statute which is available to the federal government alone
to prosecute individuals for conspiring to violate the
constitutional rights of others. By contrast, it does not
authorize individuals like the plaintiff to sue others in a civil
lawsuit for violating her constitutional rights. See Cok v.
Cosentino, 876 F.2d 1, 2 (1st Cir. 1989) (per curiam) (“Only the
United States as prosecutor can bring a complaint under 18 U.S.C.
§§ 241-242 (the criminal analogue of 42 U.S.C. § 1983)”). For
that reason, even accepting the plaintiff’s allegations as true,
that is, even assuming that all of the defendants named in Count
Four conspired to violate the plaintiff’s constitutional rights,
Section 241 does not provide her with a basis to sue any of them.
Count Four therefore fails to state a viable claim and will be
dismissed.
B. Count Eight – Medical Malpractice
Count Eight alleges that Point32 committed medical
malpractice through the “wrongful hospitalization” of the
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plaintiff and use of “false documentation” and “unauthorized
patient care practices”. To establish liability in a medical
malpractice claim, Yaghoobi must prove that (1) the defendant is
a healthcare provider, (2) the defendant’s performance did not
conform to good medical practice, and (3) the plaintiff suffered
damages as a result. See e.g., McCusker v. United States, 706
F.Supp.3d 175, 178 (D. Mass. 2023).
As a threshold matter, Count Eight as framed is arguably too
vague to permit any named defendant to discern the specific act(s)
each is alleged to have committed that caused the plaintiff harm,
and that alone would be grounds to dismiss the claim. See Fed. R.
Civ. P. 8(a)(2) (instructing that a pleading “must” contain a short
and plain statement “showing that the pleader is entitled to
relief”). But even assuming Count eight could be reframed to
better specify who provided what treatment to the plaintiff on
August 24th, the claim would still fail against Point32. That is
because the amended complaint fails to plead facts showing that
Point32 provided any care or treatment to the plaintiff at all.
On the contrary, and as Point32 notes, the amended complaint
asserts that Point32 only interacted with the plaintiff after the
plaintiff had completed her evaluation/treatment and left the
hospital, with that interaction consisting solely of the follow-
up phone call to the plaintiff through Ms. Soeum. The amended
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complaint also fails to allege facts that might otherwise allow
for an inference that Point32 played some meaningful role in the
plaintiff’s August 24th hospitalization or treatment. It does
not, for example, allege that Point32 participated in the decision
to involuntarily hospitalize and treat the plaintiff, or
supervised, managed, or controlled the providers who did.
Accordingly, even assuming, solely for the sake of argument, that
the plaintiff suffered malpractice from her treatment on August
24th, the amended complaint fails to plead facts linking Point32
to that malpractice. Count Eight therefore will be dismissed as
to Point 32.
IV. Conclusion
In light of the foregoing, the defendants’ motion to dismiss
Counts Four and Eight (D. 48) is granted. As these are the only
two counts in which the moving defendants are named, the amended
complaint shall be dismissed against them in its entirety.2
So Ordered.
/s/ Donald L. Cabell
DONALD L. CABELL, U.S.M.J.
DATED: December 2, 2024
2 The plaintiff has moved for leave to file a second amended complaint (D. 79)
but that proposed new pleading seeks only to add new claims against other
defendants not involved here and thus does not impact the court’s
consideration of the present motion.
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