Monson v. HOSPITALIZATION COM'N FOR POLK COUNTY, IOWA

• Decision Date: 07 February 1972
• Docket Number: Civ. No. 8-2188-C-2.
• Citation: 338 F. Supp. 1315
• Parties: Darlene MONSON et al., Plaintiffs, v. HOSPITALIZATION COMMISSION FOR POLK COUNTY, IOWA, et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of Iowa

338 F. Supp. 1315

Darlene MONSON et al., Plaintiffs, v. HOSPITALIZATION COMMISSION FOR POLK COUNTY, IOWA, et al., Defendants.

Civ. No. 8-2188-C-2.

United States District Court, S. D. Iowa, C. D.

February 7, 1972.

Robert C. Oberbillig, Des Moines, Iowa, and Brian Michael Olmstead, Boston, Mass., for plaintiffs.

Philip F. Miller, Asst. Polk County Atty., Lorna Williams, Asst. Atty. Gen., D. J. Fairgrave, and W. C. Hoffmann, Des Moines, Iowa, for defendants.

Before LAY and STEPHENSON, Circuit Judges, and HANSON, Chief District Judge.

MEMORANDUM ORDER

STEPHENSON, Circuit Judge.

This suit, instituted May 7, 1968, is based on 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and 28 U.S.C. § 1343(3) and (4). It seeks to challenge the validity of certain provisions of the Iowa statutory scheme governing the hospitalization of mentally ill persons.

The plaintiff, Darlene Monson, sues for herself and for others similarly positioned. The complaint seeks (a) to have the challenged statutes declared void and violative of the First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution of the United States; (b) to enjoin the several defendants from enforcing and administering the challenged statutes; and (c) damages in the amount of $150,000. The defendants are the Hospitalization Commission of Polk County, Iowa, the individual members of that Commission, and certain other private persons allegedly possessing some official connection with the commitment of the mentally ill in Polk County. The State of Iowa has been granted leave to appear as an intervening defendant.¹ All defendants by their answer ask that the suit be dismissed or, in the alternative, that the court defer action until the Supreme Court of Iowa has an opportunity to interpret and construe the questioned statutes.

Inasmuch as the suit is, in the main, one to enjoin the enforcement and execution, on federal constitutional grounds, of Iowa statutes by local officials performing a State function that represents a general state policy,² this three-judge district court was designated. 28 U.S.C. §§ 2281, 2284(1).

I

The hospitalization statutes with which we here are concerned comprise Chapters 228 and 229 of the Iowa Code.³ Chapter 228 provides for the creation, in each Iowa county, of a county commission of hospitalization. I.C.A. § 228.1. The commission is vested with complete and exclusive jurisdiction over all applications for admission and commitment to state mental facilities of mentally ill⁴ persons found within its county.⁵ I.C.A. § 228.8. Each commission is composed of three members and consists of the clerk of the District Court or, in his absence, his deputy, a reputable physician engaged in actual practice, and one reputable and actively practicing attorney. I.C.A. § 228.2. The physician and attorney are appointed to two-year terms by the District Court. I.C.A. § 228.3. In the "temporary absence" or inability of two members to act, the member present may call to his aid, on a temporary basis, persons "possessing the qualifications of the absent members." I.C.A. § 228.5. The duties of the clerk include, inter alia, the task of issuing all processes required to be given by the commission. I.C.A. § 228.6. The commission has broad subpoena powers. I.C.A. § 229.3.

Chapter 229 delineates the procedures by which commitment to a state mental facility is accomplished. Specifically, § 229.1 authorizes two distinct kinds of hospitalization:

(1) Voluntary admission. Under this procedure, a person may be admitted to an institution for a period not to exceed thirty days for temporary observation, examination, treatment and diagnosis. The only conditions attached to this type of commitment are that the admittee give his written consent and that the facility to which admission is sought be neither overcrowded nor understaffed. When commitment is accomplished in this way, the superintendent of the facility must make certified findings as to mental illness. In the event further treatment and commitment is indicated, the superintendent must so inform the appropriate county commission.

(2) Involuntary commitment. The commission's power to decree forced hospitalization is engaged by the filing of a sworn information on behalf of one whom the informant believes to be mentally ill and a fit subject for custody and treatment. The statute imposes no limitations with regard to who may file this information. The informant must allege that the prospective patient is within the county and specify his or her address if known. If, from the information, the commission concludes that there is reasonable cause to believe that the charge of mental illness is true, it then may order the person against whom the charge is lodged to be brought before it and issue a warrant empowering a local peace officer to take such person into custody pending an adjudicatory hearing. I.C.A. § 229.2. Thus, with regard to involuntary commitment, we are confronted with a statutory scheme under which a warrant may issue ex parte upon the filing of a sworn information, the execution of which requires no notice, and the effect of which is to authorize immediate detention at a county custodial facility. And, while it is clear that the warrant and information imply conduct out of compliance with a governing standard, the sole standard asserted in the statute is a commission finding, also ex parte, that the person to be confined is mentally ill and a fit subject for custody and treatment.

II

This case arose in the following way.⁶ Mrs. Lucille Phillpot, the plaintiff's mother, on February 2, 1968, filed, pursuant to I.C.A. § 229.1, a formal information with a deputy clerk of the Polk County, Iowa District Court in which she alleged that the plaintiff, then 34 years of age, was afflicted with mental illness and was thus a fit subject for custody and treatment.⁷ Thereupon, without referring the matter to the County Commission and giving that body the opportunity to determine if the information was grounded on reasonable cause, the deputy clerk issued an "order to take into custody" empowering the sheriff or any peace officer of Polk County to bring the plaintiff before the County Commission "to be dealt with according to law." This "pick-up order" recited that the plaintiff should be delivered to Broadlawns Polk County Hospital.

On the day the information was filed and the warrant issued, two caseworkers from the Polk County Department of Welfare visited the plaintiff's residence and suggested that she seek voluntary admission to the Broadlawns psychiatric ward.⁸ Upon her refusal so to do, the caseworkers departed and went directly to the office of the plaintiff's personal physician. The doctor was informed of the filing of the information and issuance of the warrant. He immediately telephoned the plaintiff and encouraged her to seek voluntary admission and thereby avoid the "stigma" of judicially ordered hospitalization. One of the caseworkers returned to the plaintiff's residence and allegedly advised her that she could "sign herself in and out" of the hospital. The plaintiff then permitted the caseworker to drive her to the hospital. Upon her arrival there, she executed the following application:

"I, Darlene Pohlad, * * * hereby voluntarily apply for admission to Broadlawns Psychiatric Ward for evaluation and/or treatment of my condition and hereby grant Broadlawns Hospital and the Psychiatric Staff the right to evaluate and/or treat my condition.

"Dated this February day of 2 (sic), 1968."

The plaintiff was admitted to the hospital and remained there for fourteen days. She was discharged February 16, 1968, with a final diagnosis of "Personality pattern disturbance, paranoid personality." Some two months later the plaintiff instituted this class action in forma pauperis.

III

The plaintiff's constitutional attack is mounted against the statutory scheme under which involuntary commitment is accomplished. She urges that I.C.A. §§ 229.1 and 229.2 are invalid on their face or as applied because they clothe State officials and private persons with "uncontrolled and unfettered discretion" to deprive any person of the "liberty" secured to him by the Fourteenth Amendment solely on the basis of the belief that an individual is mentally ill and a fit subject for custody and treatment. She points to the procedural machinery established by § 229.2 by which a warrant may be issued. This provision, she asserts, authorizes the deprivation of a citizen's liberty without affording him notice and an opportunity to be heard. It also is argued, on First and Fourteenth Amendment grounds, that the term "mental illness", as defined by § 229.40, is so incomplete and indefinite as to be susceptible of an arbitrary exercise of governmental power violating established constitutional concepts. In more detail it is urged that the statutory definition is no definition at all and sets out no reasonable standard and that it leaves to prejudice, whim and caprice the power to incarcerate those to whom it is applied. Finally, the plaintiff takes issue with §§ 229.1 and 229.2 on the ground that they authorize the unreasonable seizure of a person, contrary to the express guarantees of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments.

Apparently on the chance that this court should find no constitutional infirmity in the questioned statutes, the contention is made that even though the statutory procedures and standard may be constitutionally valid, the methods used by the appropriate State officials in applying them are not. Specifically, the plaintiff maintains that the statutory standard of reasonable cause automatically is found to exist upon the filing of the information in each and every case. Ancillary to this attack, the argument is made that, as a matter of State-wide practice, informations are screened for reasonable cause by the deputy clerk with whom they are filed, rather than by the Commission en banc. The point of this argument seems to be that the...