The High Court has upheld the continuing involuntary detention of a patient at the Department of Psychiatry in University Hospital Limerick despite a dating error on an earlier admission order.
The patient, identified only as Mr M, had originally been detained under the Mental Health Act 2001 on foot of an admission order executed on 16 December 2015. That order was inadvertently dated 16 December 2016 by the admitting consultant psychiatrist.
Mr M argued that the mistake rendered the admission order invalid and that the defect should also undermine his later detention.
By the time the Article 40 habeas corpus application was heard, however, the original order had been replaced by a renewal order dated 4 January 2016. It was accepted on Mr M’s behalf that the renewal order showed no invalidity on its face.
Mr Justice Max Barrett held that the Mental Health Act creates successive periods of detention which must each be independently justified. He relied on earlier High Court and Supreme Court authority rejecting what has sometimes been called a “domino effect”, under which a flaw in an earlier detention order would automatically invalidate later orders.
The judge said the later renewal order was a separate and extant legal basis for detention. Even if the original admission order had been void because of the incorrect date, that did not invalidate the current renewal order.
The court also noted that renewal orders are themselves subject to safeguards under the 2001 Act, including assessment by a consultant psychiatrist, review by a mental health tribunal and, in relevant circumstances, an appeal to the Circuit Court.
No separate claim was made that the renewal order suffered from a lack of jurisdiction, a fundamental denial of justice or another fundamental flaw.
The Article 40 application was therefore refused and Mr M’s continued detention under the 4 January renewal order was declared lawful.