Bacon v. Bacon
| Decision Date | 06 February 1899 |
| Citation | 76 Miss. 458,24 So. 968 |
| Court | Mississippi Supreme Court |
| Parties | DANIEL W. BACON ET AL. v. MARY KATE BACON |
November 1898
FROM the circuit court, second district, of Carroll county, HON WM. F. STEVENS, Judge.
Mary Kate Bacon, the appellee, was the plaintiff in the court below; the appellants were defendants there. The suit was for false imprisonment, in the detention of appellee, a maiden lady of about fifty years of age, in the state asylum for the insane, brought by her against her two brothers, two physicians and two other parties. She charges the defendants with malice and intent to injure her good name; that they knew she was not insane; that she was carried, against her will, to the asylum and confined there for three months, and then released with a certificate that she was not insane. The defendants pleaded the general issue, and introduced evidence to show that plaintiff was a kleptomaniac; that she believed her kindred were her enemies; that she was moody and acted strangely; that her disposition had changed and she had become suspicious and inclined to make mischief. Plaintiff denied everything testified to against her, and explained the presence or denied all knowledge of articles charged to have been stolen by her.
Plaintiff was admitted to the asylum under § 2843, code of 1892 which is as follows:
Instruction No. 8, given for defendant, is as follows: "If the jury believe that the plaintiff was suffering from moral insanity, and was a kleptomaniac at the time she was sent to the asylum, they should find for defendants."
No. 23, not marked either as given or refused, reads: "If the jury believe the plaintiff was a kleptomaniac, and that kleptomania is a variety of insanity that renders one afflicted by it a proper person to be admitted into the asylum for treatment, then you should find for defendants."
There was a verdict and judgment for $ 1, 500 in favor of plaintiff, from which defendants appealed to the supreme court.
Affirmed.
Hill & Sisson, for appellants.
One thousand five hundred dollars is clearly excessive as mere compensatory damages, and ground for reversal, especially as the jury were informed that "good faith and honest purpose" were no protection against damages. Under the evidence, and even the law as announced to the jury, appellants were entitled to a verdict. The proof was overwhelming that Miss Bacon was a kleptomaniac; that she was under a delusion as to her kindred; that her manner had become very peculiar, etc. Dr. Mitchell, appellee's expert witness, unhesitatingly pronounced kleptomania a moral insanity, and stated that a kleptomaniac was a proper subject to be confined in the asylum. He further stated that, if the facts set forth in the physician's certificate were true, Miss Bacon was a proper subject to be confined. All of these facts were proved true "beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty, " it seems to us, and the verdict of the jury was wrong. While it is true that Dr. Mitchell, superintendent of the asylum, released Miss Bacon and certified that she was sane, he also stated in his evidence that kleptomaniacs were cunning and could hide their acts for a long time, and it is just possible that Miss Bacon could and did capture some of the articles belonging to the asylum during her stay there and Dr. Mitchell not know it. We desire to especially contend that the appellants are not liable for the three months' confinement in the asylum. Section 2843 of annotated code only intends and provides that a person suspected of being insane can be carried to the asylum for examination by the superintendent and trustees, and after such examination can either be admitted or discharged. The certificate only carries one to the door of the asylum, and accomplishes its full purpose when that is done. Under the law the superintendent and trustees must then decide whether "the person be in fact insane or a lunatic, " and, if they so decide, "they shall have authority to detain him, but, in all cases, they shall act at their peril if the person be sane." The "peril" applies to the officers of the asylum, and the three months' detention was not caused, and could not be caused, by the appellants. They could only cause an examination to be made by the highest authority in our state on insanity, and their liability ceased when the examination was made. Yet, in this case, the defendants were tried and punished for the three months' detention in the asylum, and evidence was introduced on the subject and it became part of the case, and a material part of it, and no doubt the defendants were punished by the jury for this very confinement.
Drs. Fullilove and Armstrong were not liable under the proof, for while the declaration charged that the certificate was "false and malicious" and "each one acted his part, " and that all was done in furtherance of the "common design, " yet the evidence fully exonerates the physicians, and the law is that such certificates cannot cause imprisonment or detention, and subsequent detention after the giving of such certificate cannot be said to be predicated of or based on it. The physicians possess no judicial power and their decision is no adjudication, and the effort to establish that it was the cause of imprisonment wholly fails. 7 Am. & Eng. Enc. L., 667 and note 2. Under the evidence this cause must be reversed as to the physicians, for there can be no cause of action against them.
McClurg & Flowers, on same side.
The primary inquiry is, whether the relations and friends and the nonexpert physicians, acting in perfect good faith and solely and sincerely for the good of the patient, have been negligent in discharging the duties to her which they have assumed. If they exercise ordinary care and are not guilty of culpable negligence in preparing the certificate, they are not liable, even though, in point of fact, the certificate be untrue.
The patient's real misfortune is in the existence of a moral and physical condition that seriously arouses the suspicions of those who love her as to the integrity of her mind and of a state of health that requires special scientific treatment, not in the fact that the misguided love has caused her humiliation, as she claims.
In defense to a declaration like that in this case, charging a common conspiracy to defraud and maliciously injure, negligently, recklessly and intentionally, it is proper that the physicians so charged may prove conversations had with members of the family in care of the patient, at that particular time and with special reference to that particular subject, as original evidence of the information upon which they acted. And so those members of the family are entitled to have those particular conversations go to the jury as original evidence to show how far they acted upon the advice of their family physicians. Both family and physician are entitled to have such conversations go to the jury as parts of the res gestae, and for this reason, if for no other, the other defendants are entitled to have those conversations go to the jury. It is proper evidence independently of being res gestae.
Such are the controlling principles governing this case, as we understand the law, and not the cold, single legal proposition of sanity or insanity as ruled by the court.
There are two proceedings under our statute for obtaining admission into the asylum--one by writ of lunacy and the other upon sworn certificate. The proceeding by writ of lunacy may be instituted by any relative or friend at any time; but strangers cannot institute it until it is shown that the relatives and friends have either neglected or refused to sue out the writ, and, further, that they permit the lunatic or insane person to go at large. The proceeding by writ of lunacy, by whomsoever instituted, is begun by oaths of the prosecutor and notice to the person charged to contest.
The other proceeding to obtain admission, and the one that directly bears upon the case, provides a different mode of procedure, but one culminating in the same inevitable conclusion, viz.: That the final and responsible adjudication of insanity is lodged with those into whose judgment, skill, and ability the law rests that important question--namely, the superintendent and board of trustees of the asylum. Confessedly, the weak point in the proceeding by certificate lies in the want of notice to the patient. Yet the other and further safeguards thrown about this proceeding make it infinitely more secure against mistakes than the proceeding by writ de lunatico inquirendo.
By this humane proceeding the law presumes the...
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...grounds incorporate the similar rule of Mississippi. See Smith v. Patterson, Miss.1952, 214 Miss. 87, 58 So.2d 64; Bacon v. Bacon, Miss.1899, 76 Miss. 458, 24 So. 968. This general rule of liability provides that "all those who, in pursuance of a common plan or design to commit a tortious a......
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