Hammon v. Hill

• Decision Date: 29 October 1915
• Docket Number: 3.
• Citation: 228 F. 999
• Parties: HAMMON v. HILL, Superintendent of Allegheny County Home and Hospital for Insane.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Western District of Pennsylvania

228 F. 999

HAMMON v. HILL, Superintendent of Allegheny County Home and Hospital for Insane.

No. 3.

United States District Court, W.D. Pennsylvania.

October 29, 1915

J. E Little, of Pittsburgh, Pa., for petitioner.

Langfitt & McIntosh, of Pittsburgh, Pa., for respondent.

THOMSON District Judge.

The relator, John Hammon, Sr., asks for a writ of habeas corpus alleging his illegal confinement in the Allegheny County Home and Hospital for the Insane, in violation of his rights under the Constitution of the United States. Whether the court should grant or refuse the writ, under section 755 of the Revised Statutes (Comp. St. 1913, Sec. 1283), depends in this as in every other case upon the facts as set forth in the petition.

Turning to the petition, we find it alleges: That petitioner is confined and restrained of his liberty by virtue of a certain paper purporting to be a commitment committing relator to said asylum as an insane person, and that the sole authority by virtue of which relator is restrained and detained is the said commitment in writing, a copy of which is attached to and made part of the petition. That the said commitment was issued in a proceeding arising as follows:

On or about the 14th of August, 1913, one Anna M. Hammon, daughter of the relator, requested Dr. J. Lewis Srodes, the then superintendent of the said asylum, to receive relator, an insane person, as a patient in said hospital, expressing her belief that such attention was necessary for his benefit which request was afterwards reduced to writing. That about the same time the relator was invited, while in Garrick, to take an automobile ride, which invitation he accepted, and that he was taken to the said asylum at Woodville, Allegheny county, Pa., where he has been since and is now forcibly restrained of his liberty. That according to the paper purporting to be a commitment on file in the office of the superintendent of said asylum, and under color of which he is restrained of his liberty, Drs. S. J. S. Fife and E. N Husler, on the 14th and 15th days of August, 1913, respectively certified under oath that in their opinion the relator was insane; that the disease was of a character which required that he be placed in a hospital or other establishment where the insane are detained, for care and treatment. That thereupon one A. W. McMillen, a justice of the peace of the county of Allegheny, certified in the same paper, Exhibit A, that the said physicians had duly made oath to their certificate of insanity of the relator, and that their signatures thereto were genuine, and the signers physicians of good standing and repute, and that thereupon J. McB. Robb, a director of the poor of Allegheny county, ordered Dr. J. Lewis Srodes, superintendent of the said asylum, to admit relator as an insane person to the hospital.

He alleges that the act approved May 8, 1883 (P.L. 21), under which he was committed, violates the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, in that he is restrained of his liberty without due process of law; that he was tricked into the asylum, examined without notice of the proceeding, and without a hearing or chance to defend, and has been incarcerated in the asylum for two years and upwards to the present time; that the said act is unconstitutional and void; that he is not committed or detained by virtue of any process of law known to the courts of the United States, or the several states, nor held in confinement by virtue of any final judgment or decree of any competent court or tribunal, or by virtue of any process issued upon such judgment, but is held without due process of law.

It thus appears that the relator is confined in an asylum for the insane, under the provisions of an act of assembly of Pennsylvania passed for the care and treatment of the insane. It is not averred in the petition that the relator was sane at the time of his commitment or at the time of the filing of the petition for the writ. On the contrary, the amendment to the petition avers that on August 27, 1913, one Chas. J. Speas, on behalf of petitioner, obtained a writ of habeas corpus under the said act of 1883 for the petitioner's discharge, and that on hearing the relator was found to be insane and remanded to the asylum. The petitioner, therefore, bases his right to discharge, notwithstanding his insanity, or presumptive insanity, on the unconstitutionality of the act under which he was committed, and that therefore he is restrained of his liberty without due process of law. A state would indeed be derelict of its duty if it failed to make adequate provision for the care and treatment of the insane. The state is the parens patriae of the insane. In the case of Mormon Church v. United States, 136 U.S. 57, 10 Sup.Ct. 792, 34 L.Ed. 478, the Supreme Court, through Justice Bradley, quotes from Fontain v. Ravenel, 17 How. 369, 15 L.Ed. 80, as follows:

'When this country achieved its independence, the prerogatives of the crown devolved upon the people of the states. And this power still remains with them, except so far as they have delegated a portion of it to the federal government. The sovereign will is made known to us by legislative enactment. The state, as a sovereign, is the parens patriae.'

The court then says:

'This prerogative of parens patriae is inherent in the supreme power of every state, whether that power is lodged in a royal person or in the Legislature, and has no affinity to those arbitrary powers which are sometimes exerted by irresponsible

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