C.R. v. Adams

• Decision Date: 02 June 1981
• Docket Number: No. 80-2047,80-2047
• Parties: C.R., individually and on behalf of all other persons similarly situated, Appellant, v. David Arthur ADAMS, individually and in his capacity as Judicial Hospitalization Referee, Michael V. Reagen, Charles Palmer, and Candiah Thiagarajah, Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

Page 625

649 F.2d 625

C.R., individually and on behalf of all other persons

similarly situated, Appellant, v. David Arthur ADAMS, individually and in his capacity as

Judicial Hospitalization Referee, Michael V.

Reagen, Charles Palmer, and Candiah

Thiagarajah, Appellees.

No. 80-2047.

United States Court of Appeals,

Eighth Circuit.

Submitted April 2, 1981.

Decided June 2, 1981.

Philip Mears, Mears, Zimmermann & Mears, Iowa City, Iowa, for appellant.

Thomas J. Miller, Atty. Gen. of Iowa, John G. Black, Sp. Asst. Atty. Gen., Thomas Mann, Jr., Asst. Atty. Gen., Des Moines, Iowa, Steven S. Hoth, Des Moines County Atty., Burlington, Iowa, for appellees.

Before LAY, Chief Judge, STEPHENSON and ARNOLD, Circuit Judges.

ARNOLD, Circuit Judge.

This appeal presents the question of whether an outpatient, under Iowa law, has a right to notice and hearing before his status is revoked and he is returned to an institution for inpatient treatment. While this important constitutional question will be discussed in this opinion, ¹ we find that another question is dispositive of the case at this point in the litigation. That question is whether this is an appropriate case for abstention by the federal courts in view of the unsettled state of Iowa law underlying the federal constitutional question presented to the District Court.

Plaintiff filed his suit in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Iowa as a class action on behalf of himself, all persons involuntarily committed to mental institutions in Iowa, and all those, like plaintiff, previously committed but currently on outpatient status. Defendants in this suit are David Arthur Adams, Judicial Hospitalization Referee for Des Moines County, Iowa, Michael V. Reagen, Director of the Iowa Department of Social Services, Charles Palmer, Director of the Division of Mental Health Resources for the Iowa Department of Social Services, and Candiah Thiagarajah, Clinical Director at the Mental Health Institute at Mount Pleasant, Iowa. Plaintiff brings his suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that Section 229.14(3) of the Iowa Code violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. He seeks both declaratory and injunctive relief.

After a brief hearing and the filing of affidavits, the District Court denied preliminary injunctive relief and denied plaintiff's motion for class certification. For the reasons set out below, we vacate those orders and remand the cause for further proceedings to be described below.

C.R. is a person living in Iowa who has spent most of the last seven years under one form of involuntary commitment or another. Most of that time he was under commitment orders from the District Court of Des Moines County, Iowa. He is currently under a new commitment order from Johnson County, Iowa. In May of 1978, May of 1979, and March of 1980, C.R. was released from Mount Pleasant as an outpatient under court order to continue treatment at a regional mental health center. During these periods of outpatient treatment, C.R. was still considered committed, and will remain so until his involuntary commitment is terminated by court order. While on outpatient status, C.R. is free to live in the community; his only restriction has been that he report periodically to a staff member at a designated mental health clinic. C.R.'s first two periods of outpatient treatment ended when his outpatient status was revoked and he was returned to Mount Pleasant. His deposition reveals that both times he was "picked up" and returned without notice or hearing. He claimed to have had no knowledge of the reasons for the revocations. ²

In assessing plaintiff's request for injunctive relief under the requirements of Fennell v. Butler, 570 F.2d 263 (8th Cir. 1978), cert. denied, 437 U.S. 906, 98 S.Ct. 3093, 57 L.Ed.2d 1136 (1978), ³ the District Court found that he had failed to make a showing of probable success on the merits and had not shown irreparable injury. The court held that since plaintiff was under the continuing jurisdiction of the committing court during the outpatient phase, he was not entitled to a due-process hearing prior to transfer back to inpatient status. The court further found plaintiff's private liberty interest "substantially reduced" by the continuing jurisdiction of the committing court and the fact that he was originally involuntarily committed after notice and a hearing. On the issue of irreparable injury, the court thought the chance of injury to be highly speculative, since C.R. was currently on outpatient status and there was no indication that that status was threatened with revocation. ⁴ As to the alternative test articulated in Fennell, the court found that the balance of hardships did not tip decidedly toward plaintiff because of the state's interest in the matter.

Allegations of violations of federal constitutional rights by state civil commitment procedures are of course within the jurisdiction of federal courts. Parham v. J.R., 442 U.S. 584, 99 S.Ct. 2493, 61 L.Ed.2d 101 (1979); Addington v. Texas, 441 U.S. 418, 99 S.Ct. 1804, 60 L.Ed.2d 323 (1979). Abstention from the exercise of federal jurisdiction is the exception, not the rule. Colorado River Water Conservation Dist. v. United States, 424 U.S. 800, 96 S.Ct. 1236, 47 L.Ed.2d 483 (1976).

The doctrine of abstention, under which a District Court may decline to exercise or postpone the exercise of its jurisdiction, is an extraordinary and narrow exception to the duty of a District Court to adjudicate a controversy properly before it.

County of Allegheny v. Frank Mashuda Co., 360 U.S. 185, 188-89, 79 S.Ct. 1060, 1063, 3 L.Ed.2d 1163 (1959).

Plaintiff's allegation of denial of due process in his summary recommitment presents, in our view, a substantial constitutional question. Involuntary confinement for treatment of mental illness is a "massive curtailment of liberty." Humphrey v. Cady, 405 U.S. 504, 509, 92 S.Ct. 1048, 1052, 31 L.Ed.2d 394 (1972).

There can be no doubt that involuntary commitment to a mental hospital, like involuntary confinement of an individual for any reason, is a deprivation of liberty which the state cannot accomplish without due process of law.

O'Connor v. Donaldson, 422 U.S. 563, 580, 95 S.Ct. 2486, 2496, 45 L.Ed.2d 396 (1975) (Burger, C. J., concurring). The cases of Morrissey v. Brewer, 408 U.S. 471, 92 S.Ct. 2593, 33 L.Ed.2d 484 (1972), and Gagnon v. Scarpelli, 411 U.S. 778, 93 S.Ct. 1756, 36 L.Ed.2d 656 (1973), have taught us that persons such as parolees and probationers who enjoy only a limited or conditional liberty are nonetheless protected from deprivation of that conditional freedom without some process which is due. Other courts have found a strong analogy between the parolees' situation in Morrissey and the mental patient who has been granted outpatient status. Lewis v. Donahue, 437 F.Supp. 112 (W.D.Okl.1977); Meisel v. Kremens, 405 F.Supp. 1253 (E.D.Pa.1975). Even those persons who are confined in prisons have due-process rights when they are threatened with involuntary transfer from prison to a mental institution. Vitek v. Jones, 445 U.S. 480, 100 S.Ct. 1254, 63 L.Ed.2d 552 (1980).

Lower federal courts which have reviewed state recommitment statutes similar to Iowa's have uniformly found that the conditional liberty interest of a mental patient or of a drug-dependent person on outpatient status cannot be summarily terminated without notice and the opportunity for a hearing. Lewis v. Donahue, supra (statute permitting revocation of outpatient or convalescent leave without notice of hearing violates the Due Process Clause); Meisel v. Kremens, supra (Pennsylvania statute providing for summary revocation of leaves of absence from state mental health facilities at discretion of directors is violative of due process); United States ex rel. Shaban v. Essen, 386 F.Supp. 1042 (E.D.N.Y. 1974), aff'd without opinion, 516 F.2d 897 (2d Cir. 1975) (revocation of outpatient status of drug-dependent person is unconstitutional without written notice and an opportunity to be heard).

Other state recommitment statutes have been held to violate due process by state appellate courts. In re Bye, 12 Cal.3d 96, 115 Cal.Rptr. 382, 524 P.2d 854 (1974), cert. denied sub nom. Procunier v. Bye, 420 U.S. 996, 95 S.Ct. 1437, 43 L.Ed.2d 679 (1975); In re Anderson, 73 Cal.App.3d 38, 140 Cal.Rptr. 546 (1977); Ball v. Jones, 43 App.Div.2d 281, 351 N.Y.S.2d 199 (1974), modified on other grounds sub nom. Pannell v. Jones, 36 N.Y.2d 339, 368 N.Y.S.2d 467, 329 N.E.2d 159 (1975); cf. Dietrich v. Brooks, 27 Or.App. 821, 558 P.2d 357 (1976).

Although the question before the District Court in this case would ordinarily be an appropriate one for a decision on the merits, we think the proper action in the circumstances of this case is abstention under the Pullman doctrine. Railroad Commission of Texas v. Pullman, 312 U.S. 496, 61 S.Ct. 643, 85 L.Ed. 971 (1941). Pullman abstention was recently examined by this Court in Coley v. Clinton, 635 F.2d 1364 (8th Cir. 1980). In that case, a class of plaintiffs challenged Arkansas's recently revised civil commitment procedures found in the Arkansas Mental Health Act of 1979. ⁵ After applying the five factors to be considered in deciding whether to abstain from a case under the Pullman doctrine, ⁶ this Court held in Coley that the relatively new commitment procedures were "unclear and susceptible to interpretations that would entirely obviate appellants' federal constitutional claims." Id. at 1373. The case before us is analogous.

C.R. challenges Section 229.14(3) of the Iowa Code, Iowa Code Ann. § 229.14(3) (West Supp.1980), on the assumption that it does not provide for notice or hearing upon revocation of outpatient status and recommitment. The question of Iowa statutory construction is not, however, so simple as that. Section 229.14(3) reads, in part:

The order (that the respondent is seriously mentally impaired and in need of...