Furr v. Spring Grove State Hospital

Lowe, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. According to the Book of Genesis, God did not answer Cain’s evasive question: "Am I my brother’s keeper?”. From that day to this man has individually sought to assume a moral responsibility to effect that purpose, but has consistently shied away from legally imposing such a ⁴⁷⁶ responsibility. In Pope v. State, 284 Md. 309, 324-325 (1979), the Court of Appeals pointed out that: "Under the present state of our law, a person has no legal obligation to care for or look after the welfare of a stranger, adult or child. 'Generally one has no legal duty to aid another person in peril, even when that aid can be rendered without danger or inconvenience to himself....

A moral duty to take affirmative action is not enough to impose a legal duty to do so.’ W. LaFave & A. Scott, Criminal Law 183 (1972). See Clark & Marshall, A Treatise on the Law of Crimes § 10.02 (7th ed. 1967). The legal position is that 'the need of one and the opportunity of another to be of assistance are not alone sufficient to give rise to a legal duty to take positive action.’ R. Perkins, Criminal Law 594-595 (2d ed. 1969). Ordinarily, a person may stand by with impunity and watch another being murdered, raped, robbed, assaulted or otherwise unlawfully harmed. 'He need not shout a warning to a blind man headed for a precipice or to an absent-minded one walking into a gunpowder room with a lighted candle in hand.

He need not pull a neighbor’s baby out of a pool of water or rescue an unconscious person stretched across the railroad tracks, though the. baby is drowning, or the whistle of an approaching train is heard in the distance.’ LaFave & Scott at 183. The General Assembly has enacted two 'Good Samaritan’ statutes which afford protection to one who assists another in certain circumstances. Those statutes, however, impose no requirement that assistance be rendered.” In a limited number of ways, government has assumed restricted responsibilities for the care of specified classes of its citizens, but steadfastly refused to impose any sanction upon itself for failing to meet the standard it assumed, ⁴⁷⁷ continually clutching its shield of sovereign immunity. See Macy v. Heverin, 44 Md. App. 358 (1979).

Recently, however, the Legislature lowered the State’s shield a trifle by enacting the Maryland Tort Claims Act (Md. Cts. & Jud. Proc. Code Ann. § 5-401, et seq.), which permits limited recovery for State tort liability upon causes of action arising on or after July 1, 1982. This cause of action, appealed from the Circuit Court for Baltimore County, arose from the State’s acceptance of responsibility as keeper of its mentally handicapped but before the shield of immunity for failure to meet the proper standards of that role had been lowered.

Among the facilities the State provided for those with mental difficulties is the Spring Grove Hospital Center 1 into which a person with a mental disorder susceptible of care and treatment may be admitted in one of three ways. See Md. Health-General Code Ann., Title 10, Subtitle 6: a voluntary admission (which is self-explanatory) pursuant to the appropriate procedure set forth in Part II of the Subtitle; 2 an involuntary admission requiring 2 physicians’ certifications containing the requisites set forth in Part III; 3 or, in the event an individual is unusually dangerous to himself or others, he may be admitted under an emergency evaluation procedure set forth in Part IV. 4 In September of 1975, a young male sex deviate in his early twenties named Arthur F. Goode, III, became a "voluntary” committee at Spring Grove for the second time in two years. Because of his pedophilic tendencies, Goode had been first admitted to Spring Grove on March 1, 1973, following an arrest for having committed violent and unnatural sex acts with little boys. He was diagnosed on November 1, 1973 and less than two years later was again arrested on similar charges.

According to the hospital forensic unit director, Dr. Donald F. Bartley, Goode was initially returned to the hospital on April 30, 1975, and ⁴⁷⁸ stayed through September 11, 1975, on a detainer for evaluation of his competency to stand trial pending court charges of assault and unnatural sex acts. A hospital’s note dated September 22, 1975 indicated Goode’s expressed sexual preference for young boys around the ages of 10 to 12 and spelled out his admitted modus operandi and experience prior to his return to the institution for the evaluation. The extracts and appendices submitted to us indicate that certain evaluation and recommendations were communicated exclusively to Mr. Goode’s attorney. The recommendations of Dr. Donald F. Bartley, who was the director of the forensic unit at Spring Grove, apparently were made upon numerous inquiries by that attorney, presumably contemplating a plea submission which ultimately was effected.

Nothing in the record indicates that those evaluations and recommendations were sent to the court. Goode, however, was given a suspended sentence conditioned upon his voluntary commitment to Spring Grove Hospital for treatment. The sentence was in accord with Dr. Bartley’s recommendation addressed to Goode’s attorney, and the condition was consummated by Goode’s admission to the Hospital on September 11, 1975. From the hospital’s position a voluntary admittee is not restrained in the ordinary sense.

If he wishes to leave, according to the Hospital’s "Admission Procedures”, he need only request release in writing, giving 72 hours notice and, unless he is a danger to himself or others, "he is released”. If such voluntary admittee simply leaves without the requisite notice, he is considered to have "eloped” and presumably little or no effort is expended in effecting his return. "Patients who . .. have eloped” however, "are accepted for return any time.” Arthur Goode’s fourth stay at Spring Grove began September 11, 1975, during which time he appears to have occupied himself with unnatural sex acts upon other male patients, temporary "elopements” seeking out young males for sexual purposes when he was denied "outside privileges,” and even threatening phone calls to his own sister. ⁴⁷⁹ Nonetheless, after a minimal confinement, he regained his "privileges” and even obtained an on-grounds paying job. After twenty weeks at Spring Grove on February 10, 1976, Goode again "eloped”, this time to his parents’ home in Florida.

He notified the Hospital of his whereabouts and received mail from the hospital including his back pay. The hospital recorded that he was "[djischarged from elopement” and that it had "notified the Court of Arthur’s elopement and discharge, and recommended to the Court that this patient be admitted to a criminal institution.” Exhibits of correspondence between Goode’s attorney (Edward T. Conroy) and Goode indicated that Mr. Conroy’s cajoling caused Mr. Goode to agree to return to Spring Grove. On the morning he was to appear, March 15, 1976, Dr. Olive Harris, who was the Director of Admissions at Spring Grove, had been forewarned that he was to return voluntarily. In addition to a detainer at the Hospital, she had been advised that the Florida police had requested notification of his return in order to ascertain his whereabouts for inquiry relating lo the murder of a young boy in Florida.

When Goode arrived, in the company of his sisters, Dr. Harris was still busy with an admission of a patient needing restraint and asked Goode to wait. Goode — suspicious — followed her into her office and, when again told to return to the waiting room, decided to depart once more. On deposition he explained: "A ... — when I walked up to the door, the office door, she was on the desk — at her desk on the phone. I didn’t interrupt her.

I just stood there for a minute — not a minute — wasn’t even that long. She looked at me and put the phone down and, you know, held the phone over here (indicating) and gave me a nasty look. 'Well, go sit down,’ or 'what you want now?’ Something like that, you know. I didn’t just walk in there and start talking, get her upset, you know. But she was real upset, you know, like.

And I haven’t talked back to her or nothing. I was very polite to her. ⁴⁸⁰ Q So what did you do when she told you to go sit down? A I just went on back and sat down with my sisters. And I told them, you know, 'Let’s get out of here, you know,’ because — I forget exactly what I told my sisters.

They might remember. But I just told them that, 'There’s something strange going on around here, you know.’ And I didn’t know what the — I don’t know what I exactly said. But I knew that she was probably — that Dr. Harris — that she was probably on the phone calling the police, either Baltimore County police or the security guards around the hospital grounds or something, probably to hold me on this murder case here in Florida which I believe she may have gotten contacted about prior to my arriving there. In other words, it appeared — Q Why did you think she had been contacted about it?

A Because it appeared to me that she was expecting me to come there. She was expecting me. That’s the attitude she gave me. So, like I said, I got up with my sisters and walked on out.

In fact, I just walked on out. I didn’t care if they’re going to sit there or not. Q How long had you been in the office? A Well, they say ten minutes.” Goode never returned to the Hospital and within a week lured eleven-year-old Kenneth A. Dawson into a wooded area, committed brutal sex acts upon him, then murdered him.

Kenneth’s estate and his parents sued Spring Grove, Dr. Harris and Dr. Bartley for, among other things: negligent misdiagnosis and recommendations; negligently allowing Goode to abscond; and, negligently failing to ⁴⁸¹ expedite his readmission and/or notify authorities of his reappearance and disappearance. Spring Grove Hospital was dismissed on the basis of sovereign immunity, which relief was initially denied Dr. Harris; however, she and Dr. Bartley were subsequently the beneficiaries of summary judgments. The judge reasoned that Dr. Harris owed no duty to appellants’ decedent and that Dr. Bartley’s conduct was not the proximate cause of Kenneth’s death; nor was the consequent death of Kenneth A. Dawson reasonably foreseeable. Although appellants’ question whether Spring Grove Hospital is immune from suit for negligence of its agents, servants, or employees, their one paragraph argument implicitly concedes the issue, contending only that the Court of Appeals should follow Spencer v. General Hospital of District of Columbia, 425 F.2d 479 (D.C.Cir. 1969), "and the multiple cases in other jurisdictions dealing with publicly operated hospitals should be the law of this State.” Since they further concede that we may not overturn the doctrine of sovereign immunity, Macy v. Heverin, 44 Md. App. 358 (1979), there is nothing for us to answer.

While it is of little solace to appellants, we did note some legislative light emanating from a crack-in-the-door hereafter, through the enactment of the Maryland Tort Claims Act. Our concern then, turns to the summary judgments entered on behalf of Doctors Harris and Bartley. That entered on behalf of Dr. Harris was entered because, absent any "special relationship,” she owed no "duty” to the decedent. As to Dr. Bartley, the judge found that there was no proximate cause between the conduct of Dr. Bartley and the death of Kenneth A. Dawson, primarily it seems, because that consequence was not a reasonably foreseeable result of his conduct.

The concept of "duty” is, of course, the predicate upon which a negligence action is founded. There must be a duty or obligation which a defendant is under to protect the ⁴⁸² plaintiff from injury and the negligence, as such, is the failure to discharge that duty resulting in a loss, injury or damage to the plaintiff. Scott v. Watson, 278 Md. 160, 165 (1976). The "duty” concept as used in negligence cases is really an obligation to conform to a standard of conduct toward an identified person.

The specificity of the object of that obligation is of relatively recent origin since at old common law the obligation to behave properly was owed to all the world. It was not until the mid-nineteenth century that a plaintiff was required to bring himself within the scope of a defined legal obligation so that it may be regarded as personal to him. See generally, Prosser’s Law of Torts (3rd ed.) Ch. 10, § 53 (1964). Like so much of our law, however, "duty” upon analysis has become more of a semantic conclusion than an analytical aid.

In negligence law it is hopelessly intertwined with, and obscured by, the equally mercurial concepts of "proximate cause” and "foreseeability” — terms which are drawn upon, as the judge did here, to explain the result reached as best they are able. In noting the narrowing of the object of one’s duty from all the world at old common law, to a "foreseeable plaintiff,” it would be judicial sacrilege not to acknowledge Judge Cardozo’s opinion in Palsgraf v. Long Island Railroad Co., 248 N.Y. 339 (1928). It was there that the courts began to view negligence as a matter of relation between the parties which must be founded upon the foreseeability of harm to the person who is in fact injured. Suit would thereafter stand only upon a wrong personal to the plaintiff and not as the vicarious beneficiary of duty to another.

Almost immediately the Restatement of Torts accepted the view that there is no duty and hence no negligence — or liability — to an unforeseeable plaintiff. Particularly apropos here § 315 of the Restatement (Second) (which the Court of Appeals essentially adopted as the law of Maryland in Scott, supra at 166 ) holds that as a general rule a private •person is under no special duty to protect another from criminal acts by a third person, in the absence of a statute, or special relationship. That point was also emphatically made in Pope, supra. The Court there was faced with a ⁴⁸³ criminal