In re Beth Israel Medical Center

OPINION OF THE COURT

David B. Saxe, J.

Court-appointed guardians over the personal needs of incapacitated individuals are sometimes confronted with difficult decisions and problems in the course of arranging the life of the incapacitated person (IP). This motion raises the important question of the extent of the powers of a guardian to hospitalize an adjudicated incapacitated person if a need to administer psychiatric medication is perceived.

In the case of Mrs. Farbstein, it was shown that although she generally appears and sounds quite lucid, she suffers from a degenerative dementia, and that…