Court of Appeals Denies State Lawyers Access to Psychiatric Patients in Nursing Homes [View All]

In a 4-3 decision, the New York State Court of Appeals refused this week to order nursing homes to provide lawyers from the state's Mental Health Legal Services access to psychiatric patients and their medical records. The suit sprang from investigative reporting about the Pataki-era practice of moving the institutionalized mentally ill from state facilities into nursing homes not licensed by the Office of Mental Health, which won a Pulitzer Prize for The New York Times in 2003. The court found that MHLS, which is mandated to provide legal services and assistance to "individuals with mental disabilities" by state law, do not have jurisdiction over patients in the nursing homes precisely because the nursing homes are not licensed by OMH.

Writing for the majority, Judge Eugene Pigott Jr. found that the Mental Hygiene Law which sets MHLS' jurisdiction is written in such a way that the jurisdiction is based on the nature of the facility and not on the status of the patients. If it's not a facility licensed by the OMH, MHLS has no jurisdiction over the same patients who were receiving legal services in licensed facilities.
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Meanwhile, some patients haven't been able to see a lawyer for seven years. An attorney for the nursing homes denying access said MHLS attorneys could see a patient if the patient independently requested it, but MHLS Deputy Director Dennis Feld, co-founder of the Special Litigation and Appeals Unit, isn't impressed.

"Asking the patients themselves to take the initiative to contact the legal service and raise criticisms about their treatment and status is unrealistic, Seld said. "We have a right to speak to these individuals in private. We do at the psychiatric centers," he said."

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2010/04/court_of_appeal.php

Elderly gulag. Shame on them all.