State v. Le Vien, L--22176

• Decision Date: 13 December 1963
• Docket Number: No. L--22176,L--22176
• Citation: 196 A.2d 546,82 N.J.Super. 29
• Parties: STATE of New Jersey and County of Bergen, Plaintiffs, v. Richard C. LE VIEN, Guardian of Gardner Le Vien, a mental incompetent, Defendant.
• Court: New Jersey Superior Court

Page 29

82 N.J.Super. 29

196 A.2d 546

STATE of New Jersey and County of Bergen, Plaintiffs, v. Richard C. LE VIEN, Guardian of Gardner Le Vien, a mental

incompetent, Defendant.

No. L--22176.

Superior Court of New Jersey

Law Division.

Dec. 13, 1963.

Arthur J. Sills, Atty. Gen., for plaintiff State (Eugene T. Urbaniak, Deputy Atty. Gen., of counsel).

Winne & Banta, Hackensack, for plaintiff, Bergen County (Horace F. Banta, Hackensack, of counsel).

George J. Kauper, Union City for defendant (Arthur Knaster, Jersey City, of counsel).

G. H. BROWN, J.C.C. (temporarily assigned).

By this action the State of New Jersey and the County of Bergen seek to recover from the estate of Gardner Le Vien the sum of $24,992.09 as the actual per capita cost of maintaining him in the state hospitals at Greystone Park and Trenton since 1942 as a public charge. The estate funds are ample to pay the bill.

The following facts have been stipulated. Le Vien was adjudged an insane person by the Bergen County Court of Common Pleas. He was consequently committed to Greystone Park by an order dated September 11, 1942. About a year later he choked two fellow patients to death. Under an order signed by the Commissioner of the Department of Institutions and Agencies on September 20, 1943 he was transferred to the State Hospital at Trenton to be held in special custody in a maximum security unit until restored to reason. He is still there in what is known as a 'civil section.' His current mental diagnosis is 'schizophrenic reaction, paranoid type, with guarded prognosis.'

This is a full statement of the legal process producing Le Vien's confinement.

Plaintiffs rely upon R.S. 30:4--83, N.J.S.A., for validity of the transfer. The statute provides:

'Any inmate of any charitable, hospital, relief or training institution as classified in section 30:1--7 of this title may be transferred to any other charitable, hospital, relief or training institution, by order of the commissioner in accordance with the formally adopted rules of the state board either upon the initiative of the commissioner or upon the application of the chief executive officer.'

In their claim for reimbursement, plaintiffs invoke the following further section of Title 30:

'Every patient supported in a state charitable institution shall be personally liable for his maintenance and for all necessary expenses incurred by the institution in his behalf * * *.' (N.J.S.A. 30:4--66)

Defendant, Gardner Le Vien's guardian, resists the claim on several grounds:

'First: The facts of the case preclude a finding that Le Vien has the statutory status of a 'patient supported in a State charitable institution,' and that without this foundation the claim for reimbursement must fall.

Second: Le Vien should be classified as 'insane' within the criminal connotation of R.S. 30:4--78, so that in accordance with its provisions his maintenance will be at government expense.

Third: The State should not benefit from its wrongful failure to bring a timely indictment against him for the homicides.

Fourth: He is to be treated as 'indigent' because a 1947 court order, so declaring his status, subsists.

During his confinement at the Trenton State Hospital Le Vien has been in a 'charitable' institution as that term has long been understood in Title 30. The dichotomy presented in R.S. 30:1--7, N.J.S.A., at the time of the transfer, was between 'charitable, hospital, relief, training institutions' on the one hand and 'correctional institutions' on the other. The content of the latter category was particularized by R.S 30:1--2, N.J.S.A. in the words 'correctional, reformatory and penal institutions.'

Both the 'New Jersey state hospital at Greystone Park' and the 'New Jersey state hospital at Trenton' were thusly denominated 'charitable' institutions by the Legislature in R.S. 30:1--7, N.J.S.A. Defendant argues that this treatment of the term does not serve to elucidate it as used in N.J.S.A. 30:4--66. The Legislature in that instance, it is said, did not mean to comprehend the fact situation present here where a person is 'forcibly confined.'

Gardner Le Vien was duly committed to Greystone by the 1942 order. It was a civil commitment after a finding of insanity in the sense of his being dangerous to himself and to others. It was directed that he be confined until restored to reason or until the further order of the court. Any attempt on his part to leave that place would have been met by force. In this respect he was 'forcibly confined' in the admittedly 'charitable' structure of that institution. His subsequent transfer to the Trenton hospital did not subject him to an atmosphere of any qualitative difference. He was simply in a place where the same restraint could be imposed more effectively. By stipulation, he was in a 'civil section.' He was not confined to Trenton for correction, reform or punishment. Absent these functions, an institutional environment is 'charitable' because of the catalogue established by the Legislature in R.S. 30:1--7, N.J.S.A.

It is clear from R.S. 30:4--78, N.J.S.A., that if Le Vien had institutional status as...