People ex rel. Kaminstein v. Brooklyn State Hospital

• Decision Date: 19 January 1966
• Citation: 49 Misc.2d 57,266 N.Y.S.2d 916
• Parties: The PEOPLE of the State of New York ex rel. Morton KAMINSTEIN, Relator, v. BROOKLYN STATE HOSPITAL, Respondent.
• Court: New York Supreme Court

Page 916

266 N.Y.S.2d 916

49 Misc.2d 57

The PEOPLE of the State of New York ex rel. Morton KAMINSTEIN, Relator, v. BROOKLYN STATE HOSPITAL, Respondent.

Supreme Court, Special Term, Kings County, Par II.

Jan. 19, 1966.

Morton Kaminstein, pro se.

Louis J. Lefkowitz, Atty. Gen., Raymond McKaba, Asst. Atty. Gen., for Department of Mental Hygiene.

Martin Siegelbaum, Gerald Kaplan, for Mental Health Information Service.

BENJAMIN BRENNER, Justice.

The relator is a patient in a State mental hospital who, by means of this habeas corpus proceeding is seeking his release. The respondent hospital claims that he has not sufficiently recovered to permit such release. They also refuse to apply the provisions for periodic court authorization for retention of patients in mental hospitals as set out in Section 73, Par. 3 of the Mental Hygiene Law, as amended, effective September 1, 1965, claiming that the provisions of the construction clause contained in Section 217 of the Mental Hygiene Law, as amended, expressly exclude those persons certified before September 1, 1965 from the protective procedures of Section 73, Par. 3. The pertinent clause of Section 217 states as follows:

'* * * As to any persons admitted to be certified pursuant to the provisions of this chapter prior to its amendment by this act, the provisions of this chapter prior to such amendment shall continue to govern.' (Emphasis supplied.)

It is my considered view that the hospital authorities are misconstruing the clause. I also believe that the newly enacted amendment of the Mental Hygiene Law (L.1964, ch. 738, eff. Sept. 1, 1965) sets up arbitrary and unreasonable classifications which cancel out important and salutary benefits also therein provided for admission and retention procedures.

It surely was the hope and expectation of those who sought to ameliorate admission and retention conditions of the mentally ill and the senile aged, in regard to speedy and efficacious treatment and to protection of their civil liberties, that all persons alleged to be mentally ill shall enjoy equal benefits, treatment and status. Unfortunately, this is impossible if court authorized retention will not be pursued for the bulk of presently hospitalized patients, who have been admitted before September 1, 1965, and if the arbitrary classification of 'voluntary' patient may continue to be induced and secured.

First, as to construction, the above-quoted language of the amended Act was obviously intended to apply to interim admission procedures and was designed to cover those who were 'admitted to be certified' under the provisions of the Act prior to its amendment. If the Legislature had intended to exclude persons already certified from the benefits of the act, it could easily have used the words 'already certified,' which would have clearly shown that it did not intend any part of the new provisions to have any retroactive effect. By using the words 'admitted to be certified' it seems clear that the reference was to persons as to whom the initial certification procedure had begun but would not be completed before September 1, 1965. As to such persons, the laws under which the initial certification procedures have begun would continue. It does not thereby exclude from its coverage the vastly improved right to automatic and periodic court authorized retention procedures which right has been acquired by all mentally ill patients who have been hospitalized before and since September 1, 1965.

Under the provisions of section 73 of the amended Act, a mandatory procedure for court authorization to retain an involuntary patient has been set out which protects him against long term unauthorized detention. Hospitalization is continued for the first sixty days where no hearing is requested but court authorization is required thereafter, and court reauthorization for retention is repeatedly mandated after successive periods of six months, one year, and two years, unless the patient agrees to become a 'voluntary' patient. There are also requirements for notices to the patient, his relatives, and to the Mental Health Information Service, following the procedure set out in the original admission, and, unless the patient agrees to remain, he cannot be compelled to do so without these periodic court authorizations.

The right to possible release and the right to court hearing and surveillance with respect to continued long term hospitalization cannot be reserved merely for the handful of the newer patients and denied to the thousands of patients who are so unfortunate as to have been admitted prior to September 1, 1965. If those patients are to be excluded and relegated to the discredited procedures of the pre-amended statute, there would remain for them the possibility of perpetual and unending forced incarceration in the mental hospitals unless, in the judgment only of hospital doctors, they should be found to have become well, or in the rare case such as this, a writ of habeas corpus is sought. (Upon the hearing herein the court was informed that only a single application for an order of retention, of the several thousand patients at Brooklyn State Hospital, has been made since September 1, 1965, the effective date of the Act.)

The petitioner is a drug addict and is one of such earlier patients. His exclusion is not based upon any differentiation as to the nature or degree of his mental illness and physical condition. The sole reason ascribed for construing the clause against him is that he was admitted prior to September 1, 1965. That construction, which so cruelly bars him from the self-executing and periodic court authorized retention procedures is not in the public interest. It is contrary to the obvious purpose of the Legislature to substitute for a palpably unsalutary retention practice, a humane procedure consistent with civil liberty.

Suppose the Legislature were to enact a statute which provides ameliorating or improved parole conditions to convicted persons. Would not a clause in such a statute, construed in such way as to deny the improved parole conditions to persons convicted before its amendment, defeat the legislative purpose to benefit all parolees?

We must look to the rules of statutory construction as to legislative intent. The general rule is that statutes are to be construed as prospective only unless a clear expression of contrary intent is found (Mulligan v. Murphy, 14 N.Y.2d 223, 250 N.Y.S.2d 412, 199 N.E.2d 496; Ayman v. Teacher's Retirement Board of City of New York, 9 N.Y.2d 119, 211 N.Y.S.2d 198, 172 N.E.2d 571; People v. Oliver, 1 N.Y.2d 152, 151 N.Y.S.2d 367, 134 N.E.2d 197; Shielcrawt v. Moffett, 294 N.Y. 180, 61 N.E.2d 435, 159 A.L.R. 971; Jacobus v. Colgate, 217 N.Y. 235, 111 N.E.2d 837).

There is one important exception to this general rule, however, and that is in the case of remedial statutes designed to correct imperfections in a prior law. Such statutes are to be liberally construed so as to spread their beneficial result as widely as possible and wherever possible are to be given a retroactive effect (Shielcrawt v. Moffett, supra; Laird v. Carton, 196 N.Y. 169, 89 N.E. 822, 25 L.R.A.,N.S., 189; Lazarus v. Met. E. R. Co., 145 N.Y. 581, 40 N.E. 240; In Re Robinson's Claim [Catherwood], 11 A.D.2d 374, 207 N.Y.S.2d 297; People ex rel. Gabriel v. Warden of New York County Penitentiary, Ward's Island, 109 Misc. 248, 178 N.Y.S. 595; McKinney's Consolidated Laws, Book 1, Sec. 54).

The case of People v. Warden of New York County Penitentiary, Ward's Island, supra, presents some similarities to the present situation. There the court was construing a statute which amended the Penal Law and provided that time served prior to conviction and before sentence should be counted as part of the term of the sentence imposed. The petitioner had been convicted and sentenced prior to the enactment of this statute and the time which he had served prior to his sentence taken together with the time he had served after sentencing would have completed the sentence, and he was asking the court to apply the statute retroactively. The court held that the statute did not by its express terms have a retroactive effect, but that since it did not by express words forbid such retroactive effect, the statute being a beneficent one, would be liberally construed and applied retroactively.

The need for retroactivity to assure equality of treatment is not lessened simply because civil rights previously denied are asserted in a statute. Surely if perpetual legal detention of mental patients, without court authorization, as prevailed previously under the old statute, constituted an affront to their civil liberties, the correction of the evil should apply to all, and not solely to the recently admitted patients. Since this is a remedial and beneficient statute, the rules above discussed require that the provisions of section 73, paragraph 3, of the Mental Hygiene Law should be applied to all persons now confined to mental hospitals.

There is, as above indicated, yet another hazard facing petitioner. He may at any time be induced to remain in the hospital as a 'voluntary' patient for, under section 71(5), the patient's hospitalization may not only be converted to 'voluntary' on his admission but the conversion may also take place thereafter. Moreover, the statute sets out a policy of encouragement for such conversion. Thus section 71(5) of the amended Act provides:

'It shall be the duty of all state and local officers having duties to perform relating to the mentally ill to encourage any such person suitable therefor and in need of hospitalization therefor to apply for admission as provided in the section. Nothing contained in this article shall be construed to prohibit any director from converting, and it shall be his duty to convert, the admission pursuant to any other section of this article of any patient suitable and willing to apply therefor, to admission...