Court Opinion

ID: 8912996
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-11-27 03:49:38.448617+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:08:42.445977
License: Public Domain

GÁRTH, Circuit Judge,
with whom Judge ALDISERT joins, concurring.
I join in Chief Judge Seitz’s concurring opinion. I write separately, however, to express my views with respect to a troubling feature of the majority opinion. As Chief Judge Seitz has recognized in note 1 of his concurring opinion, this case does not present claims involving nonreversible surgery or the administration of antipsychotic drugs. The majority concedes as much. Nonetheless the majority includes both of these procedures in its discussion (Maj. Op. pages 165, 166). That discussion is then apparently related to the jury charge which appears as III C in the Appendix (Maj. Op. page 173) requiring as a consitutional measure the application of a “least intrusive treatment” standard where “significant deprivations of liberty” occur.
The problem with including this discussion and this charge in this case is apparent. It is crystal clear that the Plaintiff here had neither alleged nor suffered from non-reversible surgery. Nor did he allege or suffer from being medicated with a powerful anti-psychotic drug. Thus, the entire discussion in the majority opinion which refers to these two conditions is gratuitous and constitutes no more than dictum. Moreover, while it may be contended that this discussion of surgery and drugs was only to illustrate the thesis that various standards are needed to accommodate different levels of medical treatment, by referring to procedures outside the Romeo record and crafting jury instructions which govern these procedures, the majority has trenched directly upon a case which does concern the administration of anti-psychotic drugs and which is pending before this Court. That case, Rennie v. Klein, Nos. 79-2576 and 79-2577, was argued before this Court on April 22, 1980. The filing of the panel’s decision has been withheld by a majority vote of the full Court, pending the filing of the present en banc opinion.
Rennie deals with the issue of the involuntary administration of anti-psychotic drugs to mentally ill patients (as distinguished from mentally retarded patients, the focus of the Romeo case). In Rennie, the trial of this issue produced an extensive record which centered wholly on the administration of anti-psychotic drugs. That record, and the issues arising from it, were fully briefed and argued by the parties in Rennie before a panel of this Court. The decision in Rennie will therefore meet head-on the very issue of the requisite constitutional standards involved in the administration of anti-psychotic drugs which the Romeo majority by its equivocal discussion and purported adoption of a “least intrusive” standard seeks to influence, if not to establish, here. This has been sought to be accomplished notwithstanding the absence of an appropriate record in Romeo and without the benefit of analysis, argument, or briefing of the anti-psychotic drug issue by the parties in Romeo.
Thus, the multi-level series of standards adopted by the majority has now additionally resulted in bald dictum which purports to promulgate a legal standard involving the administration of anti-psychotic drugs — a standard that is wholly inappropriate for resolution in this case and one that may very well be rejected or modified by the holding of this Court in Rennie v. Klein, supra, the case which presents that very issue.