McDonald v. Boslow

• Decision Date: 30 June 1973
• Docket Number: Civ. No. 70-215-K.
• Citation: 363 F. Supp. 493
• Parties: Mr. Paul B. McDONALD v. Dr. Harold M. BOSLOW, Director of Patuxent Institution, et al.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Maryland

363 F. Supp. 493

Mr. Paul B. McDONALD v. Dr. Harold M. BOSLOW, Director of Patuxent Institution, et al.

Civ. No. 70-215-K.

United States District Court, D. Maryland.

June 30, 1973.

J. Paul Mullen, Baltimore, Md. (court-appointed), for plaintiff.

Francis B. Burch, Atty. Gen., John P. Stafford, Jr., James G. Klair, Asst. Attys. Gen., for defendants.

MEMORANDUM AND ORDER

FRANK A. KAUFMAN, District Judge.

McDonald, who was confined in the Patuxent Institution, from July 12, 1963 until November 7, 1972, instituted, on February 25, 1970, an action for damages under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging that acts committed by the several defendants during the period February, 1964 to June, 1969 violated rights guaranteed to him by the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. Specifically, plaintiff alleges that defendants inflicted "cruel and unusual" punishment upon him by beating him and by denying him needed medical attention.

Defendants have moved to dismiss or, in the alternative, for summary judgment, and in support thereof have filed the medical records of plaintiff during his confinement at the Patuxent Institution, and affidavits of four staff members of that institution.

The threshold position stated by defendants herein is that any claims relating to incidents alleged to have occurred in excess of three years prior to the commencement of this suit are barred by limitations. In McIver v. Russell, 264 F.Supp. 22 (D.Md.1967), this Court, after noting (at 25):

* * * No federal statute provides any limitations period with regard to 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Therefore: "The time for filing an action under the Federal Civil Rights Act is controlled by the applicable state statute of limitations." West v. Board of Educ., 165 F.Supp. 382, 387 (D.Md.1958). * * *

held (at 31-32):

The search for state limitations to fill the gaps in federal enactments such as 42 U.S.C. § 1983 is a search for analogies between federal and state law. Whenever federal courts attempt to apply state limitations to federal causes of action, what is sought are "practical solutions to a practical problem in the administration of justice." McAllister v. Magnolia Petroleum Co., 357 U.S. 221, 229, 78 S.Ct. 1201, 1206, 2 L.Ed.2d 1272 (1958) (Brennan, J., concurring). This Court, in searching for guides in Section 1 of Article 57, concludes that since the Maryland legislature has provided a three-year limitations period for actions, which may exist from time to time, for violation of Article 23 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights, and since the Maryland Court of Appeals has held that such rights are similar to the rights secured by the Fourteenth Amendment of the Federal Constitution, and since 42 U. S.C. § 1983 was enacted to provide a cause of action for violation of rights under that federal constitutional amendment, those same three-year Maryland limitations are applicable to actions brought under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Footnote omitted.

See Almond v. Kent, 459 F.2d 200, 203-204 (4th Cir. 1972).

The question remains, however, as to whether the running of the limitations period as to each act complained of herein from the date of the occurrence of each such act is tolled by the provisions of Md.Ann.Code Art. 57, § 2 which provides:

If any person entitled to any of the actions mentioned in § 1 shall be at the time such cause of action accrues within the age of one and twenty years or non compos, he or she shall be at liberty to bring the said action within the respective times so limited after the disability is removed, as other persons having no such disability might or should have done.

The tolling of the statute because of infancy is not available to McDonald, since he was born on November 13, 1944, and thus reached the age of twenty-one on November 13, 1965. Thus, even though plaintiff could seemingly have commenced a suit as late as November 13, 1968 for injuries allegedly sustained during his minority, his instant suit, commenced on February 25, 1970, cannot avoid the bar of limitations on the ground of infancy. But plaintiff contends that the limitations period set forth in Art. 57, § 1 has even today not yet begun to run against him in connection with any wrongs alleged by him in this case because, as a "defective delinquent", he comes within the ambit of the exception provided in Art. 57, § 2 for those who are non compos.

In Maryland an individual is presumed sane until the contrary is shown by the party suggesting incapacity. Greenwade v. Greenwade, 43 Md. 313 (1875). See also Waple v. Hall, 248 Md. 642, 238 A.2d 544 (1968). The term "disability" as used in the applicable Maryland statutes has been held to mean ". . . the general disability of lunacy or infancy as to the care of property and the safeguarding of rights." Funk v. Wingert, 134 Md. 523, 527, 107 A. 345, 346 (1919). The former procedure for determination of lunacy was set forth in Md.Ann.Code Art. 16, §§ 132-147. Those provisions were repealed by the Acts of 1969, ch. 4, § 2 effective July 1, 1969. And see the provisions of Article 59 of the Annotated Code of Maryland. However, in any event, none of the former or recently enacted statutory provisions with regard to insanity are relevant to the issue presented herein. In that connection, it is to be noted that plaintiff at no time has been adjudicated to be non compos pursuant to the pre- or post-1969 statutory law of Maryland and that there may be some question as to whether the tolling of the limitations period will commence before adjudication that a party is non compos. Cf. Matter of Easton, Incompetent, 214 Md. 176, 180 et seq., 133 A.2d 441 (1957), but cf. 54 C.J.S. Limitations of Actions § 242, at p. 270. Herein, however, plaintiff contends that his commitment to the Patuxent Institution constituted an adjudication that he was non compos sufficient to toll the statute.¹ Md.Ann.Code art. 31B, § 5 sets out the following criteria for commitment to Patuxent:

For purposes of this article, a defective delinquent shall be defined as an individual who, by the demonstration of persistent aggravated anti-social or criminal behavior, evidences a propensity toward criminal activity, and who is found to have either such intellectual deficiency or emotional unbalance, or both, as to clearly demonstrate an actual danger to society so as to require such confinement and treatment, when appropriate, as may make it reasonably safe for society to terminate the confinement and treatment.

The core issue in this case requires comparative analyses of incompetency by reason of a mental disability on the one hand, and defective delinquency on the other hand. In Matter of Easton, 214 Md. supra at 186-187, 133 A.2d at 447, the Maryland Court of Appeals wrote:

* * * We think the quoted words i. e., incompetent by reason of a mental disability and non compos mentis from the two sections have the same meaning. In Colegate D. Owings' Case, 1 Bland 370, 385, the Chancellor said: "Under the generic legal term, non compos mentis, is comprehended every species of mental derangement which incapacitates a man from assenting to, or making a legal contract." In Greenwade v. Greenwade, supra, 43 Md. 313 at page 315, this Court held: "The term(s) non compos mentis used by the Code, embraces not only lunatics and idiots, but all persons of unsound mind." Again, in Purdum v. Lilly, supra, 182 Md. 612 at page 618, 35 A.2d 805 this Court stated, the courts "will afford protection to the person and his estate where any species of mental unsoundness is clearly shown to incapacitate him from protecting either himself or his estate against his own weakness or the artifice of others." We hold these are the standards of mental incapacity intended by the Legislature to invoke jurisdiction in the equity courts under both sections 132 and 135. This seems to be confirmed by Ch. 745 of the Acts of 1957, wherein provision is made for the appointment of a conservator for persons suffering from a "mental weakness (not amounting to unsoundness of mind)". Emphases added.

See also Funk v. Wingert, supra 134 Md. at 527, 107 A. at 346 (non compos is the "general disability of lunacy . . . as to the care of property and the safeguarding of rights"). In short, the purpose behind Art. 16, §§ 132-147 was, and behind Art. 57, § 2 is, the protection of those who suffer from a debilitating incapacity to such an extent as to render them incapable of caring for themselves or their property, and as to render their assent to a contract nugatory. It is to that class of individuals to which the benefit of a tolling of the statute of limitations was addressed, i. e., that group of individuals whose cognitive functioning was so severely impaired as to render them incapable of husbanding a presently existing, known right.

A review of the purposes behind the provisions of Md.Ann.Code Art. 31B clearly indicates that it is addressed to a different group of individuals than that group of individuals covered by former Art. 16 and present Art. 59, and that commitment to Patuxent is not, in and of itself, an adjudication of non compos status sufficient to toll the statute. The motivating purpose for the creation of the Patuxent Institution is expressly stated by Art. 31B, § 5 to be the correctional goal of confining and rehabilitating individuals who "clearly demonstrate an actual danger to society so as to require such confinement and treatment, when appropriate, as may make it reasonably safe for society to terminate the confinement and treatment." Chief Judge Hammond speaking for the Court of Appeals of Maryland in Director v. Daniels, 243 Md. 16, 30-31, 221 A.2d 397, 405, cert. denied, 385 U.S. 940, 87 S.Ct. 307, 17 L.Ed.2d 219 (1966), characterized the addressees of the legislation creating Patuxent as follows:

Within the larger group of violators of the criminal law whose criminality is related to or results from mental abnormalities, it has long been recognized that

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