Court Opinion

ID: 9638916
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 15:58:27.201426+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:10.579763
License: Public Domain

ADKINS, Judge,
concurring.
Section 13-708 of the Estates and Trusts Article is ambiguous with respect to the power of a circuit court to authorize the guardian of a disabled person to permit the withholding of life-sustaining procedures. For the sake of disabled persons, guardians, relatives, and doctors, and for the guidance of circuit court judges, it is important that this ambiguity be resolved. Unlike my colleagues, I am not persuaded that the information now before us shows that most circuit court judges are assuming jurisdiction to decide the question posed by Mrs. Riddlemoser’s guardians. The anecdotal information is at least to some degree contradicted by other, concededly equally anecdotal, information contained in the brief of Amici Johns Hopkins Health System, et al.
Therefore, I believe that the public interest calls for action to end the ambiguity. And I believe that the traditional criteria for addressing issues in a moot case, as set forth in Lloyd v. Board of Supervisors of Elections, 206 Md. 36, 43, 111 A.2d 379, 389 (1954), have, for the most part, been met. But like my colleagues, I am disturbed by the absence of robust debate as to the proper construction of § 13-708. While that circumstance would not necessarily be decisive on the question of whether we should express our views in a moot case, it is a weighty factor in this case.
When the lack of contesting positions is combined with the fact that the 1990 session of the General Assembly will soon commence, thus allowing the legislature to eliminate the ambiguity, I agree that the urgency that normally must exist if we are to speak in a moot case is not present here now. Accordingly, I concur in the result.