Widgeon v. Eastern Shore Hosp. Center

• Decision Date: 01 September 1983
• Docket Number: No. 5,5
• Citation: 479 A.2d 921,300 Md. 520
• Parties: John Gilbert WIDGEON v. EASTERN SHORE HOSPITAL CENTER et al. Misc.,
• Court: Maryland Court of Appeals

Page 520

300 Md. 520

479 A.2d 921

John Gilbert WIDGEON v. EASTERN SHORE HOSPITAL CENTER et al.

Misc. No. 5, Sept. Term, 1983.

Court of Appeals of Maryland.

Aug. 21, 1984.

Peter Ayers Wimbrow, III, Ocean City, for appellant.

Andrew Lapayowker, Baltimore (Donald L. DeVries, Jr., Daniel J. Moore and Semmes, Bowen & Semmes, Baltimore, on the brief), for appellee Ronald M. Smeets, M.D.

Judith K. Sykes, Asst. Atty. Gen., Baltimore (Stephen H. Sachs, Atty. Gen., and Daniel J. O'Brien, Asst. Atty. Gen., Baltimore, on the brief), for appellees Eastern Shore Hosp. Center, Charles R. Buck, Jr., H.M. English, M.D., and E.D. DeLamater, M.D., other appellees.

Argued Before MURPHY, C.J., and SMITH, ELDRIDGE, COLE, DAVIDSON, RODOWSKY and COUCH, JJ.

ELDRIDGE, Judge.

In this case we are asked to decide whether a private action for damages exists for violations of Articles 24 and 26 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights. The question was certified to us by the United States District Court for the District of Maryland, pursuant to the Uniform Certification of Questions of Law Act, Maryland Code (1974, 1984 Repl. Vol.), §§ 12-601 through 12-609 of the Courts and Judicial Proceedings Article. ¹ In response to the certified question, we hold that Maryland recognizes a common law action for damages for violations of the state constitutional rights enumerated above.

I.

The question arose in the United States District Court pursuant to the following allegations, which are taken from the "Statement of Facts" contained in the Order of Certification and the plaintiff's second amended complaint. The plaintiff, John Gilbert Widgeon, was involuntarily admitted to the Eastern Shore Hospital Center on April 17, 1980. ² He was placed in the facility pursuant to a Petition for Emergency Admission filed in the District Court of Maryland, sitting in Worcester County, by his then wife, Joanna Marie Curty Widgeon. ³ In accordance with Code (1982, 1983 Cum.Supp.), § 10-622 of the Health-General Article, Widgeon's wife appeared before the Maryland District Court in an ex parte hearing and testified that Widgeon exhibited abnormal and violent behavior. After considering her testimony, which Widgeon alleges was wholly fabricated, the state court found Widgeon to be a danger to himself and others, and ordered him taken into custody and transferred to the Eastern Shore Hospital Center. Upon arrival at the hospital, Widgeon was examined by Drs. E.D. Delamater and Ronald M. Smeets. Although Widgeon did not show any outward signs of mental disorder, the doctors nonetheless ordered that he be held at the hospital based on his wife's testimony. According to Widgeon, his detention was part of a scheme to enable his wife to live with her boyfriend; he maintains that once she and her boyfriend arrived together in Florida, he was released immediately from the hospital.

Widgeon instituted this action in the United States District Court for the District of Maryland under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. ⁴ In addition to the § 1983 cause of action, Widgeon alleged violations of Articles 24 and 26 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights, ⁵ negligence, false imprisonment, false arrest, defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and conspiracy to commit these wrongs. Widgeon sought compensatory and/or punitive damages on all counts.

In his first amended complaint Widgeon named as defendants his ex-wife Brueckman, Drs. Delameter and Smeets Eastern Shore Hospital Center and its superintendent, Dr. H.M. English. Motions to dismiss were filed by Dr. Smeets and the Eastern Shore Hospital Center, and motions for summary judgment were filed by Drs. English and Delameter. By their respective motions to dismiss and for summary judgment, Drs. Smeets and Delameter specifically objected to those counts alleging violations of Articles 24 and 26 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights. It was their contention that the law of Maryland does not recognize a cause of action for violation of specific articles of the Maryland Declaration of Rights. This issue, along with others raised by the defendants' motions, were considered at a pretrial hearing held before a United States Magistrate. ⁶

The magistrate made several recommendations to the United States District Court, including the recommendation that the court certify to the Court of Appeals of Maryland the question of whether Maryland law recognizes an action for damages for violations of Articles 24 and 26 of the Declaration of Rights. The federal district court accepted the magistrate's certification recommendation and, as previously pointed out, certified that question to this Court by order of January 7, 1983. The plaintiff was designated as the appellant. Further proceedings in the case were stayed pending our resolution of the certified question.

II.

By Article 5 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights, all "Inhabitants of Maryland are entitled to the Common Law of England ... and to the benefit of such of the English statutes as existed on the Fourth day of July, Seventeen hundred and seventy-six ...." Under the common law of England, where individual rights, such as those now protected by Article 26, were preserved by a fundamental document (e.g., the Magna Carta), a violation of those rights generally could be remedied by a traditional action for damages. The violation of the constitutional right was viewed as a trespass, giving rise to a trespass action.

One of the earliest cases to illustrate this point was Wilkes v. Wood, Lofft's 1, 98 Eng.Rep. 489 (1763). In Wilkes, supra, the plaintiff recovered damages in a trespass action brought against an official in the office of the Secretary of State who entered his home and seized his papers upon an unlawful general warrant. Lord Pratt, in his instructions to the jury, acknowledged that the official had acted "contrary to the fundamental principles of the constitution," id. at 19, ⁷ and stated that the jury could consider the illegal conduct in assessing damages.

In Huckle v. Money, 2 Wils. 205, 95 Eng.Rep. 768 (1763), the plaintiff was awarded exemplary damages after the King's messengers placed him in custody based on an unlawful general warrant. In upholding the jury's damage award, Lord Pratt noted that the Secretary of State, who granted the unlawful warrant, had acted in violation of the Magna Carta and that, therefore, such damages were proper. He stated (2 Wils. at 206-207):

"[T]he personal injury done to ... [the plaintiff] was very small, so that if the jury had been confined by their oath to consider the mere personal injury only, perhaps 20l. damages would have been thought damages sufficient; but the small injury done to the plaintiff, or the inconsiderableness of his station and rank in life did not appear to the jury in that striking light, in which the great point of law touching the liberty of the subject appeared to them at the trial; they saw a magistrate over all the King's subjects, exercising arbitrary power, violating Magna Charta, and attempting to destroy the liberty of the kingdom, by insisting upon the legality of this general warrant before them; they heard the King's counsel, and saw the solicitor of the treasury, endeavouring to support and maintain the legality of the warrant in a tyrannical and severe manner; these are the ideas which struck the jury on the trial, and I think they have done right in giving exemplary damages; to enter a man's house by virtue of a nameless warrant, in order to procure evidence, is worse than the Spanish inquisition; a law under which no Englishman would wish to live an hour; it was a most daring publick attack made upon the liberty of a subject: I thought that the 29th chapter of Magna Charta ... which is pointed against arbitrary power, was violated. I cannot say what damages I should have given if I had been upon the jury; but I directed and told them they were not bound to any certain damages ...."

Again, in Entick v. Carrington, 19 How.St.Tr. 1029 (1765), ⁸ the plaintiff brought a trespass action against the King's messengers for unjustifiably entering his house and seizing his books and papers, and the jury awarded damages to the plaintiff. Lord Camden, after a lengthy historical review, upheld the damage award on the ground that the warrant to seize the papers was "illegal and void" (19 How.St.Tr. at 1074).

More than a century later, in Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616, 626-630, 6 S.Ct. 524, 530-532, 29 L.Ed. 746 (1886), the United States Supreme Court cited with approval Lord Camden's judgment in Entick v. Carrington, supra. The Court in Boyd reviewed the origins of the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures, and concluded that Entick's trespass action was in essence an action to remedy the government's unconstitutional invasion of his liberty and security. After quoting from Entick v. Carrington, supra, the Court explained (116 U.S. at 630, 6 S.Ct. at 532):

"The principles laid down in this opinion [Entick v. Carrington] affect the very essence of constitutional liberty and security. They reach further than the concrete form of the case then before the court, with its adventitious circumstances; they apply to all invasions on the part of the government and its employes of the sanctity of a man's home and the privacies of life. It is not the breaking of his doors, and rummaging of drawers, that constitutes the essence of the offense; but it is the invasion of his indefeasible right of personal security, personal liberty, and private property, where that right has never been forfeited by his conviction of some public offense,--it is the invasion of this sacred right which underlies and constitutes the essence of Lord Camden's judgment" (emphasis added).

Maryland courts have long recognized these principles. Both Entick v. Carrington, supra, and Boyd v. United States, supra, were expressly approved by this Court in Blum v. State, 94 Md. 375, 384-385...