Cruz v. Ward’s Empirical Analysis

Citation profile

9 federal appellate · 1 district · 3 state decisions

Most-quoted passages

The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 21 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.

1. “The nature of the medical judgments involved in this case and the context in which they are made render them peculiarly unsuited to procedural structuring by a court. Compared with other fact-finding processes, the practice of psychotherapy is highly subjective. Since two qualified psychotherapists examining the same patient can reach different conclusions as to malady and cure without either conclusion being demonstrably incorrect, diagnostic consensus is an elusive and sometimes illusory goal. The decision to dehospitalize an inmate is made by a trained physician who is involved in the day-to-day treatment at the hospital, and it is reviewed by the hospital’s chief psychiatrist. Under these circumstances, the marginal value of a third professional opinion seems questionable. The argu ments in favor of requiring review by outside parties are weaker here than in the commitment context, . . . since here the patient has been subject to protracted observation by the hospital treatment staff. In making their evaluations the doctors have recourse to the records of prior evaluations which have accumulated over the course of the patient’s stay; in most cases, they will have participated in the patient’s treatment. Thus, they are in an especially good position to reach an informed conclusion about the patient’s condition. [Cruz v. Ward, 558 F.2d 658, 662 (2d Cir. 1977), cert. denied, 434 U.S. 1018 , 98 S.Ct. 740 , 54 L.Ed.2d 765 (1978) (citations omitted).]”

   1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the majority
   e.g. In Re Hurt