## Facts

- A veteran, William Bry Newgard, suffered a severe psychotic episode in January 1965, including delusions and explicit threats to kill his wife, Eloise A. Newgard.
- Newgard was committed to a state hospital and later transferred to a Veterans Administration (VA) hospital, where he was diagnosed and treated for serious mental illness.
- During VA hospitalization, Newgard continued to display delusional thinking and generated writings indicating ongoing homicidal and dangerous ideation.
- VA personnel arranged a vocational placement for Newgard on a private ranch outside the hospital as a trial/work release.
- The ranchers were told only that Newgard had a “mental breakdown” and were not informed of his threats toward Eloise, nor given meaningful supervision guidance or conditions limiting his movements.
- The VA imposed no effective restrictions to prevent Newgard from leaving the ranch or contacting his wife, and no practical mechanism for prompt recall or intervention was established.
- About a week after placement, Newgard left the ranch, traveled to Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, and shot and killed Eloise on July 31, 1965.
- The administrator of Eloise’s estate sued the United States under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) for wrongful death on behalf of Eloise’s three minor children.

## Issues

1. Whether VA personnel breached the applicable standard of care in their diagnosis, treatment, and community placement/release decisions for a psychiatric patient known to have threatened a specific person.
2. Whether any such negligence was a proximate cause of Eloise Newgard’s death for purposes of FTCA liability under the governing state tort principles.

## Decision

- The court found VA personnel negligent in managing Newgard’s care and in placing/releasing him to an unsupervised ranch setting without adequate precautions, restrictions, or warnings.
- The court held the risk that Newgard would seek out and kill his wife was foreseeable given his prior threats and continuing symptoms.
- The court concluded the VA’s negligence was a proximate cause of the death; the killing did not constitute a superseding event breaking causation.
- Judgment was entered for the plaintiff, with damages awarded to the estate for the benefit of the three minor children.

## Legal Principles

- Under the FTCA, the United States is liable to the same extent as a private person would be under like circumstances, applying the relevant state law of negligence and wrongful death.
- Mental health professionals and hospitals must exercise reasonable care in evaluating dangerousness and making release or community-placement decisions when a patient poses a foreseeable risk of harm to others, especially where threats target an identifiable person.
- Reasonable care may require safeguards such as conditions on release, meaningful supervision arrangements, and warnings to those placed in contact with the patient when failure to do so creates a foreseeable risk of serious harm.
- Proximate cause is satisfied where the harm that occurs is within the foreseeable scope of the risk created by negligent release/placement decisions; an intentional act by the patient does not necessarily sever causation when it is the very danger that made precautions necessary.

## Conclusion

The court held the United States liable under the FTCA because VA personnel negligently placed a demonstrably dangerous psychiatric patient into the community without adequate restrictions or warnings, and the foreseeable result—his killing of his wife—was proximately caused by that negligence.


Merchants Nat'l Bank & Tr. Co. of Fargo v. United States, 272 F. Supp. 409 (D.N.D. 1967)