Cook v. Highland Hospital

84 S.E. 352, 168 N.C. 250, 1915 N.C. LEXIS 25

• Court: Supreme Court of North Carolina
• Decided: February 24, 1915
• Status: Published

Opinion

Glare:, 0. J.

Tbe plaintiff was a young woman, about to be married,, who came to Asheville, N. C., from Savannah, Ga., to rid ber system of malaria and for recreation and rest. Sbe was somewhat delicate and nervous, but the evidence is that her mind was perfectly clear. Having heard of the Highland Hospital, operated by Dr. Carroll, as a sanitarium, she entered that institution after visiting it, but it was concealed from her that it was in effect a private asylum. The defendant Carroll gave her two pamphlets, one entitled “Diets,” describing most delicious and appetizing foods. The other contained a description of sixty different “baths,” most elegant and luxurious, and offering most enticing inducements to patients. These pamphlets filed in the record are the ne plus ultra of all that is elegant and luxurious in bathing and diets.

According to the evidence of the plaintiff and her sister she entered the institution upon these representations and with no other thought than that she would be free to leave at will, could communicate freely with her family, and would receive the baths and diet mentioned in the pamphlets. She contracted for and received a front corner room, and her married sister returned to the hotel. This was on Sunday, 4 August, 1912. On the next day she was informed that she would not be permitted to see her married sister nor communicate with her, and was told that she must have her breasts massaged and her hair shampooed. She testified that her hair had been shampooed just before leaving home and she was suffering from cold, sore throat, and earache, and that her physical condition just at that time forbade her being subjected to being massaged, and she protested against both. The nurses gave this information to the defendant Carroll, but he gave imperative orders that the plaintiff “must be massaged and shampooed.” Her evidence is that in obedience to this order two or three nurses took the plaintiff forcibly from her bed, while lightly clad, raised her forcibly from the floor, when she fell upon it, carried her to the bathroom, massaged her breasts and shampooed her hair against her will. The plaintiff then demanded to leave the hospital, and to see her sister, and announced that she would not remain. The defendant Carroll was informed of this. He thereupon gave orders that the plaintiff was not to see her sister or leave the hospital. According to the defendant’s testimony, the plaintiff stated that she would jump out of the window before she would stay there without seeing her sister. The defendant Carroll thereupon directed that she should be moved into a protected room or padded cell located in the rear, with diamond-shaped wire meshing on the inside and iron bars on the outside, a locked door, and an electric light at the ceiling inclosed with wire and operated from the outside. This room had scant furniture and, according to the report of the nurses, was infested with roaches.

Adjoining this locked cell were raving, lunatics shrieking to be let out. On each of the days prior to this time and after the plaintiff was taken to the barred and locked cell the plaintiff’s married sister paid visits to the hospital, but was kept in ignorance of the treatment given to the plaintiff and was not permitted to see her. The plaintiff was kept immured in the cell, above described, adjoining raving insane people, while her married sister returned to Savannah, carrying assurance from the defendant Carroll to the family that the plaintiff was progressing nicely.

After five days the plaintiff was removed from the locked and barred cell to another back room, where she was restrained of her liberty against her will and prevented from communicating with any member of her family for more than three weeks, making thirty-two days in all, until her mother, after receiving a pathetic letter written by the plaintiff, who had bribed a colored maid to secure a pencil and mail a letter, came to the sanitarium and demanded her daughter.

The “Highland Hospital” was incorporated, but the defendant Robert S. Carroll was in sole and exclusive charge, and, together with his wife, owned ninety-nine shares out of the one hundred shares of the capital stock. During the entire time the plaintiff was in the hospital the defendant Carroll visited her only three times, according to the plaintiff’s testimony, or five times according to the defendant’s testimony. The plaintiff was paying $35 per week for board and was charged $15 per week extra for half the time of a trained nurse who was only a student and who was being paid only $8 per month by the defendants. The plaintiff was subjected to compulsory hypodermic injections twice every day during her stay, against her protest. Her breasts were forcibly massaged each day in such a forcible manner that she groaned under the treatment.

Instead of the luxurious diet described in the pamphlet, the food given the plaintiff was 3 ounces of milk and 1 ounce of lithia water eight times a day at the beginning, which was increased to 6 ounces of milk, 1% ounces of cream, and two raw crated eggs. She was read “Why Worry” and “Those Nerves” constantly during her stay. The defendant Carroll wrote only one letter to her family during the thirty-two days she was immured under his control. The plaintiff’s arm was injured by the force used in dragging her to the bathroom to such an extent that she complained of it constantly during her stay in the hospital. She testified that she was such a physical wreck by reason of'her treatment that she could not make her wedding clothes after her return home, and that she could not hold her baby after it was born. She graphically describes her agony of mind during her illegal restraint among lunatics, in a private asylum, in a distant State, far from home and friends, without means of communication with her family, without money and clothes with which to escape, being forcibly detained against her will and having-entered the institution, according to her testimony, without knowledge of its nature and being duped into supposing that it was a rest cure, with luxurious diet and baths. She testifies that she returned home a nervous wreck, requiring careful treatment for many months and indelibly stamped with her experience as a prisoner in a madhouse.

The defendants in their evidence deny the mistreatment, allege that the plaintiff was nervous and hysterical, but admit that she was restrained of her liberty ;• that she was placed in the “protected” room and afterwards removed to another “protected” room; that her hair was shampooed, though she earnestly resisted, and that she was restrained of her liberty and kept in the institution against her will, and that the family were not informed of that fact. The defendant Carroll testified that he restrained her and kept her in the institution against her will; that her lack of self-control had reached hysteria, which was that she was “impulsive and would do unreasonable things.” He did not testify that she was insane, but said that hysteria is “the borderland between sanity and insanity.”

The judge properly told the jury, “If the plaintiff was 24 years of age, unmarried, and was there in the hospital, and she subsequently applied to the authorities of the hospital for, and demanded, her release — demanded that she be allowed to go from the institution and be allowed and suffered to leave there, and after such demand made, if you find it, and that it was communicated by the nurses, or through the proper channels, to Dr. Carroll, and after that, that she, either by words or by locking doors or by anything that comes up to' the definition of imprisonment that I have given you, was imprisoned, so that she was unable to carry out her desires and wishes in that regard, then if you find these facts, after that, the court charges you as a matter of law that she would be wrongfully imprisoned and restrained of her liberty.

“If you were to find that she was in the institution and that she was demanding to be released, which was properly communicated to the hospital authorities, but if you were to further find to your satisfaction that she was so nervous from any ailment or disease and so irrational that there was reasonable probability that if so released at the time she would do herself some bodily harm, under such circumstances the hospital would have the right to detain her, and restrain her, under the law of necessity and humanity, until that condition as to the reasonable apprehension of doing herself bodily harm had passed. And within that rule or limitation it would not be a wrongful and unlawful imprisonment.

“Now, it is for you, gentlemen, to say from the testimony, the facts you find, how this matter is. Even though she went in under this paper, and if you find, as she contends, that she was perfectly rational and knew what she was doing, what she wanted and didn’t want, and she wanted to leave the institution, and expressed it to the hospital authori ties, and the hospital authorities knew of that fact, and then after that restrained her of her liberty, then it would be in law, as I am holding, wrongful detention, unless they were justified in restraining her under those rules of humanity and regard for her welfare, as I have just given you.”

There was a conflict of evidence as to the treatment, that the plaintiff received, but there is no controversy that the plaintiff was detained in the defendant’s hospital against her will; confined for thirty-two days; that she was confined a considerable part of the time in a locked and barred cell; that she was denied all communication 'with her friends and subjected to having her hair shampooed and to massage of delicate portions of her body and to hypodermic injections daily against her will.

The defendants contend that they had a right to do these things because the plaintiff signed an agreement upon her entrance that she would be subject to the rules and regulations of the institution, and that she could not be set at liberty without danger to herself. The judge submitted this latter phase to the jury, who found against it. Besides, the defendants did not account for the fact that though the plaintiff’s sister visited the institution, they gave her no information as to plaintiff’s condition and treatment, and that during the whole thirty-two days that the plaintiff was restrained by them of her liberty and subjected to physical treatment against her protest no information was given by the institution to her relatives, though this was practicable during the entire time by wire or long-distance phone.

The judge properly told the jury that the plaintiff could not thus surrender control of herself to another by signing a paper at her entrance into the institution. 4 Cyc., 365; In re Lambert, 55 L. R. A., 856; In re Baker, 29 How. (Pr.), 488. The main defense relied upon by the defendants is that if they acted in good faith there would be no liability upon their part. Whether or not this would be a defense to a recovery of punitive damages we need not discuss, for the jury in their verdict denied the plaintiff, on the issue submitted for that purpose, any recovery of punitive damages.

• “Good faith” is not a defense to the recovery of compensatory damages when the jury find that there was illegal restraint of liberty, and compulsory massage and hypodermic injections and other physical treatment upon a defenseless woman who was in the absolute power of the defendants and kept immured under lock and key and with barred windows, without information given by them to her family of her condition and she denied all communication with them.

It is unnecessary to discuss in detail the exceptions taken, for they are all covered by what we have said.

Tbe plaintiff was not committed as insane, and if sbe bad been the defendants do not account for tbe fact tbat they accepted ber as sane by-signing tbe agreement with ber upon ber entrance into tbe institution. If sbe subsequently became insane, it was tbe duty of tbe institution to have at once notified ber-mother and sister. Tbe testimony of tbe defendants, however, is tbat sbe was not insane. Evidently, tbe defendant Carroll believed tbat be bad absolute control of tbe plaintiff and the right to imprison ber if sbe opposed bis'orders or will, and tbe right to impose on ber whatever treatment be thought best, and tbat tbe family need not be consulted any more than tbe plaintiff herself. Tbe effect of being at tbe bead of such institution is very often- — too often — to render tbe person in charge callous and autocratic, and in bis own opinion irresponsible to any one.

In this land tbe law guarantees liberty to every one, subject to restraint only in tbe modes provided by tbe law, and even then there is tbe right to review tbe conduct of those in charge of those deprived of their liberty. Tbe plaintiff was not committed to tbe care of tbe defendants by any legal proceedings adjudging ber insane, and ber signing tbe paper agreeing to be subject to tbe rules and regulations of tbe institution was not irrevocable. It did not subject ber to tbe irresponsible power and control of tbe defendant. This is tbe whole controversy, and requires no further discussion.

If tbe plaintiff did not abide by ber agreement to obey tbe rules and regulations of tbe institution tbe remedy of tbe defendants was to discharge ber or, if ber condition forbade this, to notify ber relatives (neither of which they did), and not to imprison ber and to force ber to do their will.

As to the amount of compensatory damages due tbe plaintiff by reason of ber illegal detention, and tbe physical ill-treatment tbat sbe received, tbe jury have assessed tbe amount and it has been approved by tbe trial judge, and is not reviewable by us. Norton v. R. R., 122 N. C., 937; Benton v. R. R., ib., 1009, and citations; Boney v. R. R., 145 N. C., 250.

Tbe horrors of tbe imprisonment of a sane person in a private madhouse (and one is not tbe less such because it may be advertised as a “sanitarium”) have never been more graphically related or probably more truthfully than by Charles Reade in “Hard Cash.” Like tbe novels of Charles Dickens, it has aided to correct evils which till then oppressed and afflicted society without hindrance from those who administered tbe law.

Tbe finding by tbe judge of tbe facts upon tbe motion for misconduct of tbe jury was based upon tbe evidence and is not reviewable by us, and bis conclusion of law thereupon to refuse tbe motion was correct. Lewis v. Fountain, post, 277, and cases there cited.

No error.