Academia, Bizarre, Society, Torts

College Student Goes to School Officials To Complain About a Hidden Camera in Her Apartment . . . And Is Committed To Mental Hospital (Before Camera is Found)

This is an amazing story. Brooklyn College student Chinemerem Eze, a Nigerian national, was convinced that her landlord had hidden a camera in her apartment. She complained to school officials, who proceeded to arrange for her being committed to a psychiatric ward . . . Then later she found the camera.

I suppose it brings a new meaning to the school’s motto: Nil sine magno labore (“Nothing without great effort”)

Eze is now suing for false imprisonment as well as defamation on the Internet.
The complaint says that Eze went to Brooklyn College’s Office of Campus and Community Safety Services. An ambulance was called and Eze was later committed to Kings County Psychiatric Hospital for two weeks.

According to one report, she previously won $110,000 settlement against the Health and Hospitals Corp.

She found the camera in an air vent.

Eze, 26, is now a student at Macaulay Honors College.

This could make for an interesting case in terms of proximate causation. Clearly, the school itself did not make the decision to commit Eze to the hospital. That decision had to be made by health professionals. The school can argue that they are morally and statutorily bound to seek assistance for students and that the failure to do so can lead to suicides or injuries to others. Yet, this is not the type of case one would relish before a jury.

Source: NY Times

Kudos: Michael Maskell

Jonathan Turley

43 thoughts on “College Student Goes to School Officials To Complain About a Hidden Camera in Her Apartment . . . And Is Committed To Mental Hospital (Before Camera is Found)”

  2. Okay…two Tonys here.

    Both made interesting comments. (I read the posts from bottom to top).

    LOL

  4. I don’t know that the mental health law is in this woman’s state, but in the UK there is no involuntary admission unless a person poses a serious threat to themself or others. Merely having odd-sounding ideas and concerns, even if they cause you distress, are not considered in themselves grounds for admission, though much depends on how a person presents upon examination.

    It’s an important point. There are many on the right who believe without credible evidence that the President of the United States is a secret Muslim, and some of there people are very distressed at this. That doesn’t mean they all need to be detained for their own safety.

  6. “I only wish that Jared Loughner’s school had pushed for a psyc evaluation.”

    rafflaw,

    That they didn’t is a fact that continues to trouble me. With fusion centers, increased surveillance and data collection, as well as Arizona’s laws regarding mental health evaluations, one has to wonder…

  7. There is a big assault on plaintiffs and plaintiffs’ bar around the country in the guise of “tort reform”. They are attacking the lawyers, the plaintiffs, the evidence, the amount of damages, and the right to a jury trial at every opportunity. Every possible way.

    I saw statistics that 1/4 of population can be labeled mentally ill under some criteria. Beauty is in the eye’s of the beholder — same as mental illness.

    In my personal extortion experience, I was pressured to “admit” to being unstable in my motivation and execution of my plaintiff’s petitions. They tried to make me choose between two constitutional rights.

    There was a court hearing where I didn’t show up. A civil court hearing in a dismissed case that was called civil contempt of court. The day before the clerk of the 10th circuit ruled I didn’t have a right to a lawyer because I wasn’t criminally charged. Then, I guess they found the S.C. decisions, so Judge N appointed a Federal Public Defender. I never met him. He went to this hearing, that was not pursuant to criminal procedure and included only un published procedure, and tried to plead that I was stubbornly litigious because I was mentally ill.

    I got a letter from a court authorized psychologist saying I was “normal” and faxed it to PACER. The evaluation involved a very long multiple choice exam about what one would do in certain situations, or evaluating situations, followed with a long interview.

  8. anon nurse,
    Thanks for the link to Ellsberg. That is a scary situation.
    I do hope that this student gets her chance in front of a jury. The school better check its insurance coverage! I only wish that Jared Loughner’s school had pushed for a psyc evaluation.

  9. Welcome to our new police state: Any complaint is probable cause for search, jailing and humiliation. If you are lucky or rich, a lawyer will take your case. Otherwise, as they say in Brooklyn, “Civil Rights? I got you civil rights right here…”

  10. from Daniels Ellsberg’s web site (ellsberg.net)

    http://www.ellsberg.net/archive/ellsberg-on-olbermann#comments

    Glen December 18, 2010 at 6:21 pm

    Another way in which the DOD is punishing military whistleblowers is by confining them for weeks at a time on military psychiatric wards under fraudulent diagnoses. They did this to me.

    I am a US-educated medical doctor with a board certification and 14 years of active duty service, including two wartime deployments. In 2008, after I had protested being ordered to comply with torture in Afghanistan and after I tried to report possible narcotics violations to my chain of command, I was threatened, harassed, denied pay and advancement, and ultimately ordered to enter a military psychiatric ward and then held against my will for three weeks despite meeting none of the medical criteria for an involuntary psychiatric confinement. I have since learned that the Army does this regularly to silence whistleblowers and obstruct investigations. Published reports include “Whitewashing Torture” by David DeBatto in Salon.com.

    I know of one other Army physician who was subjected to this treatment, who has also gone public with his ordeal, and I suspect there are more. This program may affect only a handful of soldiers, but the effects are profound and wide-reaching, since it frightens into silence other soldiers of conscience and corrupts the work of the medical personnel involved, including military psychiatrists. I have tried to go public without success. (end of comment)

  11. Buddha,

    I saw your comment after I posted mine… Scooped again. 🙂 (And 🙂 re: Fredonia. I’m often late to the game…)

  12. anon nurse,

    I knew I was paraphrasing somebody, I just couldn’t make that blank fill in this morning in re Heller. Thanks!

  13. This is an extremely important case. I’ve done many a mental health evaluation, and for this woman to have been admitted is outrageous, IMPO. I’m seeing an increased number of such admissions. Investigations aren’t done and people’s lives are being destroyed. Thankfully this womam found the camera. What if she hadn’t? What if it had been removed before she was able to locate it.

    “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.”- Joseph Heller-

    (… and I’m not saying that this woman was paranoid. She was simply very aware of her surroundings. I like to refer to justifiable paranoia as “heightened awareness.”)

    http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/01/07/33131.htm

    But she says her pleas to campus security and the school psychologist fell on “deaf ears.”

    In her complaint in New York County Court, Eze says that a security officer from whom she fought help summoned defendant Sally Robles, an assistant professor and school psychologist to the room.

    Robles then “proceeded to ask her a series of personal questions pertaining to her psychological state of mind, including but not limited to whether she ever ‘heard voices,’ whether she had any suicidal ideation and whether she thought of hurting herself,” according to the complaint.

    Eze responded “that she had no history of mental illness, was not experiencing any psychological problems and had no intention or thought of hurting herself in any way.” She said that “she merely sought advice as to how to properly address her aforementioned suspicious, and that she believed that the professional security personnel of her school, Brooklyn College, could offer her useful initial advice as to those suspicions,” according to the complaint.

    “Plaintiff’s responses to defendant Robles’ questions fell on deaf ears, as for reasons unbeknownst to plaintiff, defendant Robles proceeded to call an ambulance to have plaintiff taken and admitted to Kings County Psychiatric Hospital.

    “Plaintiff protested, stating that she did not need to go to the hospital for any reason, and stated that rather than going to the hospital, she no longer wished to be a student at Brooklyn College, and requested to leave the premises immediately.

    “Notwithstanding plaintiff’s protestations, she was restrained in the office of Brooklyn College against her will by defendants [Robert] Scott, Robles and said John Doe security officer and forcibly led into an ambulance.”

    Scott is the coordinator of the college’s Honors Academy. Eze says he rode with her in the ambulance to the hospital, where she was involuntarily committed, “against her will and without her consent.”

    She says she was “unwillingly and improperly detained at Kings County Psychiatric Hospital for a period of approximately two (2) weeks.” She was “deprived of her liberty and civil rights, and was made physically and emotionally ill and subjected to great humiliation, loss of reputation, monetary and emotional damages.”

  14. Isabel Darcy,

    “whether she voluntarily got into the ambulance”

    Catch 22?

    If a pshychologist told me that I was mentally unstable, I, being a rational and responsible person, would likely seek out an evaluation. If an ambulance showed up, I might accept the ride. This would not be because I considered myself to be crazy, but because I would owe it to others around me to make sure that I was not.

    If she refused to voluntarily go to the hospital, they would have, as has been suggested, have her taken involuntarily. That would have initially made her look crazy.

    I wonder if her foreign accent had any influence? A friend is a physician from Nigeria. When he gets on a rant, he sounds like a crazy man, to me. 🙂

  15. There is an old truism:

    “Even if you’re paranoid, it doesn’t mean that someone isn’t out to get you.”

  16. Isabel:

    Your thoughts go to a more important point, who gets to decide who is crazy?

    There is a heavy hitter in the field of psychiatry named Thomas Szatz who believes there are very few real psychiatric diseases and ALL of them can and must be proven PHYSICALLY before anyone can be locked up for them. Meaning that no dumb-arsed cop is capable of determining it. There has to be a biological defect in the cells of the brain (or even parts of the brain missing) for real mental disease to occur.

    Good grief, I don’t think anyone examined the physical or chemical structure of this womans brain in order to determine if she had a mental disease.

    What will happen more and more with Stalincare Obamacare is that peope will be judging each other politically and not liking it, having cops throwing them (Soviet style) looney-bins.

    This is more likely a case about criminal-mindedness on the part of government officials who have become a menace to society and should be locked up themselves to protect the public.

  17. I read about this story on Friday and am happy to see it posted here. This is the tip of an iceberg…

  18. If intentional harassment can be proved … the camera came from somewhere … aren’t there criminal implications? I understand the civil suit filing but why isn’t a criminal investigation being done? Does the lack of criminal charges hurt the civil action.

    Forgive my ignorance.

  19. The complaint her lawyer filed against the school was online at the NYT.

    Essentially her lawyer apppears to be arguing false imprisonment and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The complaint is long on legal jargon but short on the facts.

    It’s unclear to me what actually happened when she was at the school and whether she voluntarily got into the ambulance, which took her to the hospital. The real tort was committed at the hospital where a doctor (unclear whether a shrink or not) told her that she might as well admit herself voluntarily as she would most likely be committed involuntarily.

    Also, it’s unclear whether her landlord or her roommates planted the camera. She also complained to the school that her roommates were harrassing her online.

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