Court Opinion

ID: 9751935
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 17:19:31.035284+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:51:19.329194
License: Public Domain

SONNER, Judge,
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent. I have no disagreement with the thorough and clear discussion of the law by the majority, but I do disagree that, after applying that law to the facts of this case, we should find the controversy moot and vacate the judgment of the circuit court.
The foundation for the majority’s holding is that there is no justiciable controversy to necessitate the issuing of a declaratory judgment. To support its conclusion, the majority relies upon Hamilton v. McAuliffe, 277 Md. 336, 353 A.2d 634 (1976), a case in which a member of Jehovah’s Witnesses, who had suffered a gunshot wound, refused a blood transfusion. Former Court of Appeals Judge John F. McAuliffe, who was then on the Circuit Court for Montgomery County, after conducting a hearing at the hospital, authorized a transfusion that reduced the risk of death during an emergency operation. After release from the hospital, the recovered patient appealed the interlocutory order that Judge McAuliffe had entered. Judge Robert Murphy, speaking for the Court of Appeals, held that the appellate case was moot. The critically different fact in that case is that there was no possibility for that appellant, beyond that of any Jehovah’s Witness, to raise the dispute again. Had the appellant remained in the hospital and subject to further need for transfusions, the controversy would not have been moot, and the hospital would have been in need of some determination by the circuit court for the rights of the respective parties.
The appellant here is the only one who can provide evidence as to whether there will be any repeat of the conduct that generated the controversy. The appellee is without the ability to show that he may be biding his time before he decides to change his diet again. There is nothing in the record to *628indicate that he has abandoned using a hunger strike as his means for protesting whatever bothers him about the State’s Attorney’s Office for Baltimore County. He should not be able to succeed in this appeal simply by desisting, for the time being, the behavior that gave rise to the need for a declaratory judgment, while persisting in his protest. I therefore believe the issues here are not moot, they are likely to arise again, and that we should have reached and decided them on their merits.