Jamie Elmhirst v. McLaren Northern Michigan Hospital, dba Northern Michigan Emergency Medicine Center, et al.

The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act of 1986 (“EMTALA”) requires that any hospital with an “emergency department” provide an “appropriate medical screening examination” to “any individual” who requests it. 42 U.S.C. § 1395dd(a). In determining what constitutes an “appropriate” medical screening, the Sixth Circuit held, in Cleland v. Bronson Health Care Group, Inc., 917 F.2d 266, 272 (6th Cir. 1990) that “appropriate” should be interpreted with reference to “the motives with which the hospital acts.” No other circuit has adopted that standard and this Court appeared to question it in Roberts v. Galen of Virginia, Inc., 525 U.S. 249 (1999), a case applying the adjoining subsection of the statute, 42 U.S.C. § 1395dd(b). The question presented is: Whether, when determining if a hospital has complied with the “appropriate medical screening” requirement of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, the court should hold that liability attaches independent of the defendant’s motivation, as five circuits have held, or impose the requirement of malicious intent found only in the Sixth Circuit’s cases and questioned by this Court.