Law Commons^™

Incompetence To Maintain A Divorce Action: When Breaking Up Is Odd To Do, Douglas Mossman Md, Amanda N. Shoemaker

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

The law has well-established provisions for handling divorce actions initiated on behalf of persons already adjudged incompetent or by competent petitioners against incompetent spouses. But how should a court respond if a mentally ill petitioner who is competent to manage most personal affairs seeks to divorce a spouse for bizarre, very odd, or crazy-sounding reasons?

Several recent social developments - better psychiatric treatment, wider acceptance of divorce, population trends, and the advent of “no-fault” and unilateral divorce laws - have made it more likely that mentally ill petitioners will seek divorces. Yet the question of whether to allow a divorce …

Promoting, Prescribing, And Pushing Pills: Understanding The Lessons Of Antipsychotic Drug Litigation, Douglas Mossman Md, Jill L. Steinberg

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

Ineffectiveness of prescription drugs, hidden drug hazards, and advertising violations have led to several drug recalls and numerous lawsuits against pharmaceutical companies in recent years. These suits have involved several varieties of medications, but psychoactive medications have figured especially prominently. A recent $1.4 billion settlement by Eli Lilly & Company related to improper promotion of its top-selling drug olanzapine included the largest individual corporate criminal fine in U.S. history.

Improper promotion is far from the sole reason why olanzapine and other “second-generation” antipsychotic (SGA) drugs have become so successful. Rather, the widespread adoption of SGAs represents a collective judgment error …

Critique Of Pure Risk Assessment Or, Kant Meets Tarasoff, Douglas Mossman Md

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

This Article takes a "critical" approach to the assumptions underlying current practices of violence risk assessment. The Article first explicates a fundamental difference between how mental health researchers now interpret the phrase "violence prediction" and how they understood that phrase in the 1970s. Applying a "critical" approach, the Article then shows that courts and mental health professionals may need to abandon the hope that more accurate methods of predicting violence will help clinicians make better decisions about potential violence. Although this result may seem disappointing, it can liberate mental health professionals from regarding patients as statistical sources of risk and …

Is Prosecution "Medically Appropriate"?, Douglas Mossman Md

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

Each year, U.S. courts send thousands of incompetent defendants to hospitals for treatment, where psychiatrists frequently administer psychotropic medication that can alleviate symptoms and allow the defendants to proceed with criminal adjudication. Although defendants and their attorneys usually do not object to such treatment, treatment refusals in two recent, nationally prominent cases-those of Russell Eugene Weston, Jr., the accused Capitol shooter, and Charles T. Sell, a dentist charged with filing false insurance claims-have focused legal and media attention on whether and under what conditions competence restoration can be forced on an unwilling defendant.

In its June 2003 decision in Sell …

Atkins V. Virginia: A Psychiatric Can Of Worms, Douglas Mossman Md

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

This article provides a psychiatric perspective on the problems Atkins raises for courts that handle death penalty cases. In contrast to the overarching aim of the majority's opinion in Atkins - making the administration of capital punishment more equitable - the Supreme Court's latest prescription of psychiatric help may only add a new layer of complexity and confusion to the already capricious process through which the U.S. criminal justice system imposes death sentences. The article briefly review's the Supreme Court's 1989 Penry decision, focusing on the role that evidence of mental retardation played in death penalty cases before Atkins was …

Unbuckling The Chemical Straitjacket: The Legal Significance Of Recent Advances In The Pharmacological Treatment Of Psychosis, Douglas Mossman Md

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

Antipsychotic medications figure prominently in the rapidly-growing field of mental disability law. Although the properties of antipsychotic medications are medical matters, legal scholars, judges, and practicing attorneys often need to understand what these drugs do. Yet the legal database - the principal or sole information source cited and consulted by legal thinkers - is often a source of confusion or misinformation about the actions of antipsychotic drugs and the scientific basis for prescribing them. The potential for misunderstanding antipsychotic treatment has increased since the arrival of "novel" or "aytpical" antipsychotic drugs, which cause fewer side effects than drugs that were …

Attorneys' And Judges' Needs For Continuing Legal Education On Mental Disability Law: Findings From A Survey, Douglas Mossman Md, Marshall B. Kapp Jd, Mph

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

Attorneys leave law school with limited knowledge and skills
concerning the issues that arise in mental disability law. Yet
psychiatrists and psychologists are appearing with increasing
frequency as witnesses in the nation's courts, and more attorneys
and judges can therefore expect to have to deal with testimony from
mental health professionals. To our knowledge, this article is the
first published assessment of practicing attorneys' and judges'
needs for continuing legal education (CLE) on mental disability
issues.

The 267 Dayton-area attorneys and 41 southwestern Ohio judges
who responded to our mailed survey said that one-seventh of their
cases raise issues related …

Dangerous Decisions: An Essay On The Mathematics Of Clinical Violence Prediction And Involuntary Hospitalization, Douglas Mossman Md

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

This Article has two major purposes. First, it provides a mathematical
description of an ideal procedure for making clinical decisions about patients'
future violence, a description that provides a context for evaluating clinicians'
"dangerousness decisions." For purposes of illustration, the Article uses a specific clinical situation-deciding whether to hospitaize involuntarily a patient
based on his risk of harming another. The Article argues that the decision
involves balancing potential risks to third parties (often the patient's family
members) with the "massive deprivation of liberty and other potential
harms to the patient that could result from confinement. The mathematical
description of the …

The Psychiatrist And Execution Competency: Fording Murky Ethical Waters, Douglas Mossman Md

Faculty Articles and Other Publications

The focus of this article is whether it is ethical for physicians to participate in the evaluation or treatment of condemned prisoners who are incompetent. According to Ward, this may be the "ultimate question, faced by psychiatrists who are asked to deal with execution competency. This article is not intended to offer an answer to this question. Rather, it seeks to (1) elucidate issues connected to the "ultimate question's" resolution, (2) articulate a set of premises within which psychiatrists should evaluate their relationship to institutions whose purposes include punishing criminals, and (3) suggest that, if the death penalty itself is …