Health authorities are to appeal a High Court ruling that a man was unlawfully detained in a psychiatric hospital and continued taking a treatment drug because a doctor threatened to lock him up if he failed to do so.
John Manweiler (64) was awarded almost €3 million by a High Court jury last April in a case in which he sought damages for personal injury, false imprisonment and the breach of his constitutional rights.
Mr Manweiler alleged he was unlawfully detained in St Brendan's Hospital, Grangegorman, from September until December 1984 and also for a time in November 1991.
He also claimed he was forced to take an anti-psychotic drug named Clopixol when discharged from hospital, which he did not want to take, for a decade.
The Health Services Executive - Northern Area, formerly known as the Eastern Health Board, has confirmed to The Irish Times that it will appeal the case to the Supreme Court later this week.
It will appeal both the ruling and damages, which were the highest awarded to date by a High Court jury.
The case placed a spotlight on procedures used by consultants to involuntarily detain patients in psychiatric hospitals.
The rules governing these procedures are due to change under new legislation providing for mental health tribunals, which promise a speedy review of all involuntary detention cases.
Up to 600 psychiatric patients who are detained against their will in psychiatric hospitals will have the legal status of their detention reviewed by independent experts when the new procedures come into force.
There is concern among campaigners and health professionals at the relatively high rates of detention in psychiatric hospitals in the State compared to other European countries.
Regional differences in committal rates mean patients are up to three times more likely to be detained against their will, depending on the part of the State where they live.
Latest figures show there were 23,234 admissions to psychiatric hospitals in 2002. Ten per cent of all admissions were involuntary.
Counsel for Mr Manweiler told the High Court that he should never have been in the hospital and there was no legal authority for his being there and the way he was treated.
In their decision, the jurors found that consultant Dr Harry Burke, now retired, did not have "good and sufficient reason" to consider it proper to detain Mr Manweiler on September 27th, 1984.
The jury also decided that Dr Burke was negligent in prescribing Clopixol for Mr Manweiler on December 4th, 1984, and that Dr Burke and other doctors were negligent in continuing the Clopixol treatment until December 1995.
The jury also found that Dr Burke threatened to have Mr Manweiler locked up in a unit at St Brendan's if he failed to continue on Clopixol, and that Mr Manweiler had submitted to that treatment solely because of the threat.
In addition the jury found that the Eastern Health Board, its servants or agents, had aggravated the injury to Mr Manweiler by the manner in which the board conducted its defence of the action.
