ROCHESTER — Legal representatives for Dr. Michael Joyner and Mayo Clinic pitched their cases about why the bulk of Joyner’s lawsuit accusing his employer of violating his academic freedom of speech and maliciously disciplining him should continue to trial or not.
In a video conferencing hearing on Monday, Judge Kathy Wallace of Olmsted County’s Third Judicial Court listened to the arguments about Mayo Clinic’s motion to dismiss three of Joyner's five claims made in the lawsuit filed in November 2023.
She took the matter under advisement and will issue a decision in the future. A jury trial is scheduled for the week of July 7, 2025.
Joyner, an anesthesiologist and physiologist who has worked at Mayo Clinic since 1992, is suing his employer for disciplinary action taken against him for what Mayo described as “problematic” statements to the media and “unprofessional” behavior.
Mayo Clinic suspended Joyner for one week without pay in March 2023, withheld a scheduled raise, and curtailed his availability for media interviews. Joyner appealed his suspension. A committee of Mayo Clinic physician peers upheld the disciplinary action.
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He is still employed by Mayo Clinic and continues to be one of the clinic’s top researchers, bringing in millions of dollars per year in federal grants and other funding.
The heart of the lawsuit is based on Joyner's claim that Mayo Clinic "weaponized" its disciplinary system in retaliation for his part in a whistleblower case and in response to conflicts with his supervisor, Dr. Carlos Mantilla, and CEO Dr. Gianrico Farrugia. Mayo Clinic frames it as a personnel situation in which an employee spoke out of turn in the media and treated his co-workers inappropriately.
Mayo Clinic’s position is the court should dismiss Claims I, II and V of Joyner’s lawsuit because the clinic's academic freedom and anti-retaliation policies are not legally binding contracts nor did a “handshake agreement” with Mayo Clinic guarantee tenure of “permanent employment” for Joyner.
Attorney Mick Ryan, who leads Minneapolis-based law firm Dorsey’s labor and employment practice group, represented Mayo Clinic and described the case as “straightforward” and cited Minnesota case law to support the position that Mayo Clinic’s policies are not legal contracts and that Joyner is not a tenured employee.
“... As stated in their brief, we submit that there is no basis in the complaint or the conclusion that Dr. Joyner is tenured either as a matter of fact or as a matter of law. But for purposes of this motion, the more fundamental point is that it doesn't matter. Tenure doesn't magically turn something that's not contractual into a contract,” Ryan said.
He later added, “The cases are clear that you cannot have tortious interference with a contract unless you have a valid underlying contract. Therefore, the policies that we're talking about are not contracts.”
Attorney Kellie Miller of Allen Harris Law based in Connecticut and Pennsylvania represented Joyner in the hearing and disputed Ryan’s position.
“The main question in this motion is whether Mayo is responsible for upholding their promises to employees found in their policies and procedures because of Mayo’s prestige as an academic medical institution. The answer to this question impacts more than the rights of Dr. Joyner or other faculty at the Mayo Clinic,” she stated.
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She cited Minnesota cases to defend the position that Joyner is a tenured employee and that the Mayo Clinic’s employee policies should be considered as contracts. Miller also highlighted Joyner’s allegations regarding Farrugia and Mantilla.
“Even worse, defendants Farrugia and Mantilla claim that they can knowingly make false statements about Dr. Joyner’s well-documented and stellar professional reputation willfully and maliciously interfering with his employment relationship and acting contrary to how any institutional leader should act, let alone leaders of an academic institution claiming to be in the service of public health,” Miller told the judge.
Ryan responded that the core of the case depends on if the policies can be considered contracts and he contended that none of Miller’s arguments prove that.
“Your honor, just very briefly, let me let me end where I began. There's a lot there. But respectfully, none of it matters,” he said.
Mayo Clinic’s motion does not address Joyner’s third and fourth claims.
His third claim is that Mayo Clinic violated Minnesota’s personnel record statute by not providing him with all of the documents in his personnel file, despite repeated requests.
Joyner claims the alleged violation of the personnel record statute caused him to suffer “a diminished professional reputation, a reduction in his ability to advance scientific research and share his research publicly, lost wages and pay increases, and diminished earning capacity in the future, and by causing Joyner substantial emotional distress.”
The fourth claim in the lawsuit is that Mayo Clinic violated Minnesota’s Whistleblower Act by retaliating against Joyner for reporting that employees of MITRE Corp., a McLean, Virginia-based nonprofit that Mayo Clinic was working with Joyner on convalescent plasma research, tried to illegally access Mayo Clinic patient data in 2020.
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In the lawsuit, Joyner described the MITRE situation as occurring during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, when he was reportedly working “16-20 hours per day, often seven days per week for months” to keep up with his regular work at Mayo Clinic as well as leading research into convalescent plasma as a COVID treatment.
Joyner stated in his lawsuit that his report resulted in a formal complaint against MITRE. Mayo Clinic formally sanctioned MITRE in September 2020. Dr. John Noseworthy, who preceded Farrugia as Mayo Clinic’s CEO, is a MITRE board member.
“Farrugia became aware of Joyner’s reports regarding MITRE. Mayo was attempting to develop a profitable commercial business relationship with MITRE, and Farrugia was upset that Joyner’s reports might impact Mayo’s business plan” is how Joyner’s complaint described the situation.
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