Van Deusen v. Newcomer

• Decision Date: 14 January 1879
• Citation: 40 Mich. 90
• Court: Michigan Supreme Court
• Parties: Edwin H. Van Deusen v. Nancy J. Newcomer

40 Mich. 90

Edwin H. Van Deusen v. Nancy J. Newcomer

Supreme Court of Michigan

January 14, 1879

Submitted November 20, 1878; November 21, 1878.[Syllabus Material][Syllabus Material][Syllabus Material][Syllabus Material][Syllabus Material][Syllabus Material][Syllabus Material][Syllabus Material][Syllabus Material][Syllabus Material][Syllabus Material][Syllabus Material][Syllabus Material]

Error to Kalamazoo.Submitted November 20 and 21, 1878.Decided January 14, 1879.

Judgment reversed with costs and a new trial ordered.

Dwight May, for plaintiff in error, cited the constitutional requirement that institutions for the benefit of the insane shall always be fostered and supported (Const., Art. XIII., § 10), and argued that the right to restrain an insane person was a natural right that belonged to his relations and never depended upon municipal regulations, and that the State only interfered when the general public was interested.The provision that no one may be restrained of his liberty without "due process of law" is meant only to secure the individual from the arbitrary exercise of the powers of government, unrestrained by the established private rights and distributive justice.Bank of Columbia v. Okely, 4 Wheat. 235.Good faith and honest intentions should protect physicians and nurses from any liability for their conduct in the treatment of one who is put in their care.

Henry F. Severens, of counsel for plaintiff in error, as to the admissibility of evidence upon professional and hypothetical questions, cited Kempsey v. McGinniss, 21 Mich. 123;Underwood v. Waldron, 33 Mich. 232;Hitchcock v. Burgett, 38 Mich.As to the incompetency of evidence as to the mental condition of the plaintiff at the time of the trial, 1 Greenl.Ev., § 52;Combs v. Winchester, 39 N.H. 1;Henman v. Lester, 12 C.B. (N.S.) 776;Com. v. Buzzell, 16 Pick. 157; as to the competency of evidence of the details of plaintiff's conduct while in the asylum, Beaubien v. Cicotte, 12 Mich. 459;Evans v. People, 12 Mich. 27.

D. Darwin Hughes of counsel for plaintiff in error.It is argued for the defendant in error that as the statute for the appointment of guardians for insane persons gives the guardian absolute control of the person as well as of the property of his ward, the method by which an insane person should be put in an asylum should be by the appointment of a guardian.It is a sufficient reply to this, that the appointment of a guardian for an insane person can only be made where the fact of insanity is combined with the possession of some property estate, and a large class would be left without the benefits of the asylum.But it is also argued that the asylum is a poor-house and that no one with property has any place in it, and this view excludes the operation of the statute relating to guardians.It would be inapplicable also, for the reason that the fact that an insane person is under treatment in an asylum does not interfere with the appointment of a guardian for him, or with the rights of guardianship.

The defendant in error cites some authorities which are all easily distinguishable from this case.In the Oakes case, decided in 1844, Judge Shaw said, "Taking all the evidence together we are of the opinion, that Mr. Oakes is under the operation of that degree of insanity which renders it proper that he be restrained in a hospital; that his insanity is temporary in its character, and that the restraint should last as long as is necessary for the safety of himself and of others, and until he experiences relief from the present disease of his mind," and the order made was that he should remain in the asylum until the further order of the court.The question of danger was not made the test at all.In the case of Chase v. Hathaway, 14 Mass. 222, the statute contemplated a judicial investigation and a judgment.But it is always held that a statute providing for a judicial proceeding, recognized as such at the common law, will be defective and void if it fails to provide for notice, for the purpose of acquiring jurisdiction of the partydefendant.In the Hathaway case the law was held void, for that reason.But there is no judicial proceeding provided for in this case for getting a person into the asylum or out of it.Look v. Choate, 108 Mass. 116, was a case where the patient was not brought by friends or relatives, or by any one having any right to the asylum: he was brought there by a trespasser, -- by a police officer acting without authority, -- having no power over sanitary matters at all, and under the peculiar circumstances of that case, all parties were held to be trespassers from the beginning.The caseof Underwood v. People, 32 Mich. 1, simply holds that a statute providing a judicial proceeding for the purpose of confining insane persons who have been charged with crime and have been acquitted on the ground of insanity, is void for failing to provide an adjudication of lunacy at the time of the confinement.The statute confined a person for being insane some time in the past, who might not be insane at the time he was confined.It was a police statute.The law establishing the asylum is a sanitary statute.

The constitution of Michigan declares that institutions for the benefit of those inhabitants who are insane, shall always be fostered and supported.At the outset, then, there is a distinction between the status of the Michigan Asylum for the Insane and that of any other institution to which any of these cases have reference.This institution under this constitutional provision, can, in no sense whatever, be viewed as a prison.The language of the constitution contradicts that."They shall always be fostered and supported for the BENEFIT of persons who are insane," -- not for their punishment.They are hospitals for the curing of mental diseases; but in no respect mere places of restraint.Restraint is but an incident in the treatment of the disease.This institution differs only from hospitals for the treatment of mere physical disease, in the fact that in the one case the patients are reasonable beings, capable of judging for themselves, and of safely controlling their own actions and their own treatment; and in the other case, the patients are irresponsible beings, incapable of judging what is proper for their own safety or their own cure.For the latter class of casesthe constitution has founded this asylum, and has provided as plainly as if it said in so many words, that that asylum is a proper and fit place for insane patients.That constitutional provision is "due process of law," and is the fundamental law governing the case of every one who is insane, and who needs the benefit of treatment.The constitution then, so far as the right to restrain an insane person is concerned, executes itself.In providing a place for the benefit of these unfortunate persons, it impliedly involves the power to place them there.No legislative enactment was necessary to confer the power to treat a person in an insane asylum in good faith placed there as a fit subject for treatment.The constitutional provision has, however, been carried into effect by a statute providing for the organization of the asylum, and the erection of the necessary and proper building.When this institution was organized and the building erected and ready for the reception of patients, nothing remained to be done to perfect the machinery for admission to it, except as to a certain class of persons.The doors of that institution were at once wide open to persons who could go there with money and pay their way.But if only such could be admitted, you see lying in your pathway an infirmity in the system which would shut out persons not able to pay for their treatment.Only to the patient able to lie idle in that harbor of security and pay his own board and maintenance was the asylum complete.Friends of insane persons might take them there, and justify the act by proving the single fact of insanity and good faith.The mere fact of insanity and good faith will justify; and even in determining the existence of insanity, the same question of good faith must enter into the inquiry; and if it should turn out that a mistake has been made, good faith should not only mitigate damages, but should prevent a recovery; because when a patient is in the Kalamazoo asylum, he is in the custody of the law and its officers.The statute has made no affirmative provision for the admission of such private patients into the asylum, and none was needed.The constitution establishing the institution for this express purpose is the warrant, and the insanity is the cause for putting it in motion.That the legislature considered the constitutional provision sufficient authority is clearly shown by the statute, which provides that where a person has been sent to an asylum by his friends, and becomes indigent afterwards, then on application to a certain tribunal -- the judge of probate -- an order can be made to maintain him there six months longer as an indigent person.That is a legislative construction of the constitutional provision.It is a declaration by the legislature that an asylum is a place where patients may be legally placed by their friends.It provides what may be done in case of a person put in the asylum by his friends that becomes indigent after being sent there.

What then remained to be done after the asylum was built and ready for patients?It remained to provide for the maintenance therein of those doubly unfortunate persons who, in addition to their mental disease, were afflicted with pecuniary incapacity, and not able to maintain themselves while in the asylum.Without that provision this asylum was an asylum for the rich.The Legislature proceeded,...