In 2009 this author wrote of the Infante v. Dignan case,1 an interesting Court of Appeals decision arising out of an Article 78 proceeding. In Infante the petitioner had challenged the determination of a medical examiner, who had ruled a death by an anti-depressant drug overdose a suicide.
The deceased was a former nun, for whom suicide carried implications of grave sin, which according to the petitioner made the act of suicide “unthinkable.” The pro se petitioner (the decedent’s father) pointed out that the deceased had suffered from rheumatoid arthritis and other conditions, for which substantial quantities of narcotics had been supplied. These drugs would have been far more suitable for suicide than the drug that had caused the death, and the medical examiner had admitted that when he issued his determination, he did not know the narcotics were available.
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