Preston v. Meriter Hospital in the Supreme Court of Wisconsin

When a baby is born in a hospital birthing center, the newborn has come to the "emergency department" for purposes of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA). Thus, the hospital must provide "an appropriate medical screening examination" to any infant born at the hospital birthing center in order to determine whether the infant has an emergency medical condition.     

Civil commitment by conservatorship: the workings of California's law

This article summarizes the conservatorship provisions of the California Civil Commitment Statute, the Lanterman-Petris-Short (LPS) Act and reviews the major findings from previous studies. By studying the hospital records of eighty-five gravely disabled patients affected by LPS, the authors address issues raised by these reports. The results indicate that the law's provisions work unevenly. Patients with acute and current disability received conservatorships more frequently than those who had been disabled in the past. There is some evidence that the process is used to confine threatening patients and does not function equally well for all diagnostic groups.