Craig Sheehan v. Star Insurance Co.

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR PUBLICATION
File Name: 16a0621n.06
No. 16-1692
FILED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS Nov 22, 2016
FOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT DEBORAH S. HUNT, Clerk
CRAIG SHEEHAN, )
)
Plaintiff-Appellant, )
)
v. ) ON APPEAL FROM THE
) UNITED STATES DISTRICT
STAR INSURANCE COMPANY, et al., ) COURT FOR THE EASTERN
) DISTRICT OF MICHIGAN
Defendants-Appellees. )
)
)
BEFORE: DAUGHTREY, ROGERS, and COOK, Circuit Judges.
ROGERS, Circuit Judge. After Craig Sheehan accidentally fell and injured his head at
work, he sought workers’ compensation from his employer. The employer’s workers’
compensation insurer sent Sheehan a letter requesting that he undergo an independent
examination by a psychologist, which the insurer had arranged for that purpose. The notice
indicated that “[f]ailure to report for said examination may result in the loss of your
compensation benefits.” Sheehan reported for the exam, which lasted 7 to 8 hours. Contrary to
Sheehan’s arguments, this does not amount to the tort of false imprisonment under Michigan
common law. Sheehan’s actions were sufficiently voluntary that there was no imprisonment, as
the district court reasoned, and there is no indication that the Michigan Supreme Court would
likely say otherwise. The district court therefore properly dismissed Sheehan’s claim.
No. 16-1692, Sheehan v. Star Insurance Co., et al.
After Sheehan injured his head while on the job, allegedly resulting in difficulties with
his memory, he sought compensation under Michigan’s Workers’ Disability Compensation Act
from his employer, CJB Trucking, Inc. (“CJB”). Star was then the insurer for CJB’s workers’
compensation claims, and as a part of its standard procedure for handling a claim like Sheehan’s,
it sent him the letter that is the subject of this suit:
In accordance with the Workers’ Compensation Act, you are hereby requested to
report for scheduled independent examination on Monday, September 30, 2013, at
9:00 a.m. at the office of:
Dr. Manfred Greiffenstein
....
Failure to report for said examination may result in the loss of your compensation
benefits. Enclosed please find a check in the amount $92.96 for your mileage
expense related to this appointment.
If, for any reason you are unable to keep this appointment, please contact the
writer.
Allegedly believing that he would forfeit any right to workers’ compensation if he declined to
submit to the exam, Sheehan reported six weeks later to Dr. Greiffenstein to undergo the
requested “neuropsychological assessment.”
A year and a half later Sheehan brought this putative class action suit in diversity against
Star1 alleging, among other things, that by sending the letter requesting an independent medical
exam Star had falsely imprisoned him under Michigan law. Because the letter allegedly
threatened him with the loss of his workers’ compensation benefits if he refused to submit to the
1
Meadowbrooks Insurance Group, Inc. was also named as a defendant in Sheehan’s complaint, allegedly
because the company had adjusted Sheehan’s workers’ compensation claim. However, the only claim left on
appeal—of false imprisonment—runs solely against Star.
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No. 16-1692, Sheehan v. Star Insurance Co., et al.
neuropsychological exam with Dr. Greiffenstein—an examination that Sheehan claims “inflicted
on [him], mental anguish, outrage at loss of liberty, [and] emotional distress,”—and because Dr.
Greiffenstein was allegedly also not a physician or surgeon authorized to practice medicine in
Michigan, Sheehan claimed that Star had not only restrained him against his will, but had done
so unlawfully under Michigan’s workers’ compensation law. He accordingly sought
compensation in excess of $75,000, along with interest, costs, and attorney’s fees.
The district court dismissed Sheehan’s complaint, relying on the opinion in a virtually
identical case, Prieur v. Acuity, 143 F. Supp. 3d 670 (E.D. Mich. 2015). The court noted four
separate grounds justifying dismissal:
First, Defendants neither seized anything of value from Plaintiff nor advised him
that failure to appear for the [exam] would result in loss of benefits. Second,
Plaintiff’s voluntary compliance with a request to appear for [an exam] did not
constitute the restraint on personal liberty or freedom of locomotion required to
sustain a false imprisonment claim. Third, it does not appear that any Michigan
court has yet recognized a false imprisonment claim of this nature. Finally, it is
unlikely that Michigan courts will recognize such a claim, since doing so would
subject an insurance carrier to liability anytime it requests verification of claim by
requiring the claimant to undergo examination by someone other than a physician
or surgeon licensed to practice medicine under the law of the state—whether it be
a physical or mental examination or an examination under oath or deposition.
Sheehan v. Star Ins. Co., 2016 WL 2609784, at *2 (E.D. Mich. May 6, 2016) (internal quotation
marks and citations omitted). Sheehan now appeals the dismissal of his false imprisonment
claim.
Sheehan’s case hinges on his contention that the letter Star sent him was not a request but
a threat, and that under Michigan’s law of false imprisonment—which, in a diversity suit like
this, this court is bound to apply, Allstate Ins. Co. v. Thrifty Rent-A-Car Sys. Inc., 249 F.3d 450,
454 (6th Cir. 2001)—that threat was coercive enough to amount to arrest or restraint, the first
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No. 16-1692, Sheehan v. Star Insurance Co., et al.
element of a claim of false imprisonment. Michigan law, however, does not appear to recognize
a theory of personal coercion capacious enough to cover a claim of arrest or restraint where, as in
this case, the plaintiff has voluntarily submitted to that restraint. Because Sheehan has also
pointed to no case that would suggest the Michigan Supreme Court would likely say otherwise,
the district court’s dismissal of Sheehan’s claim of false imprisonment—reviewed de novo,
Conlon v. InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, 777 F.3d 829, 832 (6th Cir. 2015)—was proper.
Sheehan’s claim of false imprisonment fails because Star did not restrain him in any
sense recognized by Michigan law. Michigan law requires for false imprisonment that the
defendant have somehow constrained the plaintiff’s “liberty or freedom of movement,” whether
manually or in some other way. Tumbarella v. Kroger Co., 271 N.W.2d 284, 287 (Mich. Ct.
App. 1978) (citing Stowers v. Wolodzko, 191 N.W.2d 355, 363 (Mich. 1971)). Because Sheehan
cannot contend he was manually seized by Star, the only theory of restraint open to him arises
from the supposedly coercive “threat” that Star issued in its letter, informing him that if he
declined to undergo an independent medical examination he “may” have faced the loss of any
benefits he was due under the Act. But there are two related flaws in Sheehan’s theory. First is
that Star’s letter is more naturally read as a request, or at most a request accompanied by a
warning, rather than an actual threat. The letter, after all, only “requested”—not demanded or
ordered—Sheehan to report for the examination with Dr. Greiffenstein. Although the letter does
open—intimidatingly perhaps—by invoking Michigan law, and concludes by drawing Sheehan’s
attention to the very real risk under that Act that he might have forfeited those benefits if he had
declined to report for the exam, see MCLS § 418.385, that is all the letter does: warn Sheehan of
what might have followed if he declined to undergo the examination. But that warning hardly
transforms Star’s request into a threat—no more than a warning about oncoming traffic would
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No. 16-1692, Sheehan v. Star Insurance Co., et al.
make a threat out of a parent’s plea for her child to quit playing on a busy street. Indeed, this
impression is only strengthened by the letter’s final line, asking Sheehan to contact the letter’s
author if “for any reason” he could not make the appointment—apparently giving Sheehan the
kind of freedom to refuse Star’s request that one would hardly expect of a genuine threat.
Michigan law, moreover, does not appear to recognize a theory of personal coercion as
broad as Sheehan’s. On the contrary, the Michigan courts have made clear that where a plaintiff
voluntarily complies with a request that results in his physical confinement—such as when a
shopper chooses to submit to a search at the request of store security—there can be no “restraint”
in its tortious sense, Clarke v. K-Mart Corp., 495 N.W.2d 820, 823 (Mich. Ct. App. 1992) (citing
Bonkowski v. Arlan's Dep’t Store, 174 N.W.2d 765 (Mich. 1970)). In this case, where Star’s
letter also only “requested” Sheehan to report for an independent medical examination, his
decision to comply in the face of such a gently-worded letter was likewise too voluntary to
amount to “personal coercion” under Michigan law. Lacking a colorable theory of personal
coercion Sheehan consequently cannot make out a proper claim of imprisonment under Michigan
common law.
The example of “personal coercion” raised in Clarke also does not undermine this
conclusion. Sheehan fairly points out that the Clarke court appears to have endorsed a theory of
restraint based on personal coercion, giving the Second Restatement’s example of a store owner
who seizes the purse of a shopper suspected of shoplifting and thus tortiously “confines” the
shopper in the store, fearing as the shopper reasonably would that by leaving the purse behind
she might lose it. Clarke, 495 N.W.2d at 823 (quoting Restatement (Second) of Torts § 40A
(1979)). But the principle of that example flatly does not apply in a case like Sheehan’s, where
the alleged act of confinement was not otherwise wrongful and where the supposed threat—
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No. 16-1692, Sheehan v. Star Insurance Co., et al.
unlike that in the Restatement example—was far from immediate. Extension of the personal
property seizure example to a warning of future consequences would turn a huge category of
ordinary communications into potential false imprisonment claims. We are cited no cases that
support such an expansion of the tort.
The judgment of the district court is affirmed.
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