High Court Says State Officials Can Be Liable for Attack on Attorney

By Sherri OkamotoLegal ReporterA narrowly divided New Jersey Supreme Court on Monday ruled that qualified immunity did not shield a group of state officials from liability for an incident at a state-run mental facility where a patient attacked her court-appointed attorney in an unsupervised communal setting.The court's three-justice majority said Lorraine Gormley's evidence of the "egregious" and "conscience-shocking" conditions at the Ancora Psychiatric Hospital created a foreseeable risk of harm to her and other attorneys visiting clients in the chaotic "day rooms." Gormley had ...