As we explained in our case summary, the question in this case was whether a private right of action existed to enforce Public Health Law § 18(2)(e), which required medical providers to allow access to patient medical records and permitted them to charge a per-page fee of up to 75 cents. In a unanimous decision, the Court (Singas, J.) held that no such private right of action exists.
The Court explained the basic law governing when a court will recognize a private right of action. If the statute in question does not create a private right of action explicitly, courts will infer one only if a legislative intent to that effect can be “fairly implied” from the statute and surrounding circumstances. In assessing whether that is the case, courts look to three so-called Sheehy factors: (1) whether the plaintiff is one of the class for whose particular benefit the statute was enacted; (2) whether recognition of a private right of action would promote the legislative purpose; and (3) whether creation of such a right would be consistent with the legislative scheme. Sheehy v. Big Flats Community Day, 73 N.Y.2d 629, 633 (1989). All three factors must be satisfied, but the third is the “most important.” “[T]he presence of alternative enforcement mechanisms is frequently determinative,” the Court explained, because “where a statutory scheme contains private or public enforcement mechanisms, this demonstrates that the legislature considered and decided what avenues of relief were appropriate.”
Applying those factors to the case at hand, the Court had little trouble concluding that there was no private right of action to enforce Public Health Law § 18(2)(e). The first factor was satisfied, but the second arguably was not. A CPLR article 78 proceeding would be available to patients to advance the statute’s purpose of providing access to medical records, the Court explained. And public enforcement remedies already supplied a financial incentive for medical providers not to overcharge. But even if the second factor were satisfied, the Court concluded that the third factor “clearly” wouldn’t be. Pointing to essentially the same things that counseled against a finding for the second factor, the Court found that the creation of alternative enforcement mechanisms meant that a private right of action would be “inconsistent with the statutory scheme surrounding the $0.75 cap.”
Judge Wilson concurred in the decision but wrote separately to “clarify the proper analysis” under the second Sheehy factor. Surveying the history of Court of Appeals precedent in this area, Judge Wilson concluded that factor two properly turned on what “indications there are in the statute or its legislative history of an intent to create (or conversely to deny) such a remedy.” He concluded that the Court’s opinion strayed from that proper analysis by instead conducting a “high-level discussion of the legislature’s goal,” rather than by “examining the legislative history and text for specific indications of the legislature’s intent.” This was a problem, he explained, because it blurred the distinctions between factors two and three and because it appeared to tacitly overrule Court of Appeals precedent. He would have found inconclusive evidence of legislative intent under factor two, and thus concluded that factor two “does not cut either way.” Since the Court reached basically the same conclusion via a different analysis, though, Judge Wilson wrote separately to “emphasize the correct understanding of the second factor.”