Bergeron

Dr. Gary Bergeron (petitioner) filed a petition for a peremptory writ of mandate (Code Civ. Proc., § 1085) seeking to compel Desert Hospital Corporation (the hospital), a private, nonprofit hospital corporation, to set aside its summary decision suspending him from its emergency room call roster. The trial court granted the petition, and the hospital has appealed.

Background

Petitioner is a cardiologist who has been a member of the department of medicine at the hospital’s facility in Palm Springs since 1978.

In March 1989, petitioner performed a cardiac catheterization in the hospital’s cardiac catheterization laboratory on a patient who had been assigned to him through the hospital’s emergency room call roster. The patient was discharged the following day, and was later admitted to Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage for an angioplasty.

According to the declaration of the hospital’s chief executive officer, David Seeley (hereinafter Seeley): (1) the nursing staff told him, Seeley, that petitioner’s stated reason for the patient’s discharge was that the hospital did not do angioplasties or cardiovascular surgery; (2) at the time of the discharge, the hospital’s…