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; MECHELE HAGAN, LICSW;
and SOTHY SOEUM,
Defendants.
ORDER ON DEFENDANTS’ MOTION TO DISMISS (D. 56)
CABELL, U.S.M.J.
Vesal Yaghoobi (“Yaghoobi” or “the plaintiff”), proceeding
pro se, has brought suit against multiple individuals or entities
arising from her time as a pathology resident at Tufts Medical
Center (“Tufts”).1 Defendants Physician Health Services (“PHS”)
and Michele Hagan (“Hagan”) (collectively, “the defendants”) move
to dismiss Counts Four, Eight and Eleven of the amended complaint,
the only counts in which they are directly or indirectly named,
1 The plaintiff has since obtained counsel.
for failure to state a valid claim.2 Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6).
The court will grant the motion for the reasons stated below.
I. Relevant Background
Accepting the amended complaint’s salient allegations as
true, Yaghoobi in 2023 was a third-year pathology resident at
Tufts. In early August 2023, she 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 apprehension to Chief Resident Adnan Qamar, also
a named defendant, who dismissed her concerns.
The following day, August 24, Yaghoobi learned that her ID
badge had been deactivated, and that Tufts had revoked her access
to her work email. Shortly thereafter, she was taken to the
emergency room at Tufts Medical Center, where she was involuntarily
placed under psychiatric observation and forced to undergo a mental
health evaluation.
On August 28, Tufts told Yaghoobi that it was requiring PHS
to evaluate her mental and physical health. To conform with this
2 The plaintiff explicitly names the moving defendants in Counts Four and Eight
but brings Count Eleven against “multiple defendants,” including “Tufts Medical
Center Inc. and various individuals”. The defendants address the viability of
Count Eleven to the extent the plaintiff may deem them to be one of the “various
individuals”.
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mandate, Yaghoobi communicated with PHS both directly and through
her attorney. She asserts that “unauthorized communication”
occurred between her and a PHS employee. Additionally, although
PHS requested medical tests for Yaghoobi, Yaghoobi claims they
misled her attorney about the terms and conditions of the
evaluation.
Against this backdrop, Count Four of the amended complaint
alleges that the defendants conspired to violate the plaintiff’s
constitutional rights in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 241. Count Eight
asserts that they committed medical malpractice through the use of
“wrongful hospitalization, false documentation, and unauthorized
patient care practices.” Finally, Count Eleven asserts a claim of
defamation against “multiple defendants”.
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
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-
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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
Yaghoobi claims that the 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.
Count Four fails summarily (against any named defendant)
because Section 241 does not provide for a private cause of action.
Section 241 is a federal, criminal statute which only the federal
government may use, to prosecute individuals in criminal matters.
By contrast, it does not permit private individuals, such as the
plaintiff, to sue others in a civil lawsuit. See Cok v. Cosentino,
876 F.2d 1, 2 (1st Cir. 1989) (per curiam) (“Only the United States
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as prosecutor can bring a complaint under 18 U.S.C. §§ 241-242
(the criminal analogue of 42 U.S.C. § 1983)”). As such, even
assuming arguendo that the defendants and others conspired to
violate the plaintiff’s constitutional rights, Section 241 does
not provide the plaintiff with a basis to seek relief here. Count
Four thus fails to state a viable claim and will be dismissed.
B. Count Eight
Count Eight alleges that the defendants committed medical
malpractice through the “wrongful hospitalization” of the
plaintiff and the use of “false documentation” and “unauthorized
patient care practices”. To establish liability in a medical
malpractice claim, Yaghoobi must prove that each defendant (1) is
a healthcare provider, (2) provided her care that did not conform
to good medical practice, and (3) caused her to suffer damages as
a result. See e.g., McCusker v. United States, 706 F. Supp. 3d
175, 178 (D. Mass. 2023).
The amended complaint references PHS in just two paragraphs.
It alleges that PHS requested medical tests, that some
“unauthorized communication” occurred between a PHS employee and
the plaintiff, and that PHS provided misleading information about
the “terms and conditions” of her evaluation. The amended
complaint does not mention Hagan at all, but the defendants presume
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she is the PHS employee who reportedly had the unauthorized
communication.
In moving to dismiss, the defendants argue that the amended
complaint fails to allege that PHS deviated from some accepted
standard of care or indicate how they so deviated. They argue
further that even if PHS did depart in some way from an accepted
standard of care, the amended complaint fails to allege or show
that this departure caused the plaintiff to suffer harm or damages.
The court agrees.
To be sure, it is not always necessary to plead every element
of a claim to survive a Rule 12(b)(6) motion. However, the amended
complaint here, even when read liberally, alleges at most that PHS
provided unwanted medical treatment rather than harmful medical
treatment. Indeed, it remains unclear exactly what harm, if any,
physical or otherwise, the plaintiff is alleged to have suffered.
As such, Count Eight fails to plead a viable malpractice claim and
will be dismissed.
C. Count Eleven
Count Eleven alleges that “multiple defendants” defamed the
plaintiff. To prevail on a defamation claim, the plaintiff must
show that (1) the defendant published a written statement (2)
concerning her that was both (3) defamatory and (4) false, which
(5) caused the plaintiff to suffer economic harm or harm to her
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reputation. See e.g., Noonan v. Staples, 556 F.3d 20, 25 (1st
Cir. 2009)
The plaintiff’s claim here appears to rest on statements PHS
reportedly made while overseeing the plaintiff’s evaluation. The
plaintiff alleges that she and a PHS employee had an “unauthorized
communication,” and that PHS provided “misleading information
about the evaluation’s terms and conditions” to the plaintiff’s
attorney.
Even taken as true, these allegations fail to state a valid
defamation claim, for several reasons. First, the asserted facts
suggest that “misleading information” was sent to the plaintiff
through her attorney, but they fail to show or suggest that the
defendants published a written statement. Further, assuming
arguendo that the conveyance of information to the plaintiff
through her attorney could constitute the publishing of a written
statement, the statements apparently were not even about the
plaintiff, but rather concerned the terms and conditions of the
evaluation she was to undergo. Further still, even assuming that
statements describing the parameters of the plaintiff’s evaluation
could be read to be about the plaintiff, the amended complaint
still does not allege that any statements that were provided were
defamatory, or false, and it also does not plead facts that would
reasonably allow for such inferences to be drawn. Finally, the
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facts also fail to suggest that any statements were ever published
to the public, and/or caused the plaintiff to suffer economic or
reputational harm. Count Eleven therefore will be dismissed.
IV. Conclusion
The defendants’ motion to dismiss Counts Four, Eight, and
Eleven of the amended complaint as against them is granted.
Inasmuch as these are the only counts in which the moving
defendants are named, the complaint shall be dismissed against
them in its entirety.
So Ordered. /s/ Donald L. Cabell
DONALD L. CABELL, U.S.M.J.
DATED: December 11, 2024
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