§ 144.006.Collateral Effects of Order

The most striking provision in the chapter: a statutory right to deny the truth.

Subsection (a) allows a former mental health patient who obtained an order — and the facility or health care provider, or its owner, operator, parent or affiliate — to deny four things: the existence of any record subject to the order; the existence of the order itself; the occurrence of the admission; and the occurrence of any treatment related to it.

The second is what makes the rest work. A right to deny the admission while having to concede an order exists would disclose the admission by implication.

Subsection (b) removes the obvious consequence: a person making such a denial is not liable for a civil or criminal penalty for perjury.

That is a considerable thing for a legislature to enact, and it only makes sense against the chapter’s history. These were admissions procured by paid referrals, without a hearing, in a scheme whose participants pleaded guilty. The Legislature treated the record of such an admission as something the person should be able to put behind them completely.

A right to deny that stopped short of perjury protection would be worth little, since the questions that matter — on employment forms, insurance applications, in testimony — are asked under oath or penalty.

Note that the facility is protected too. That is not generosity to the institutions involved; it is necessary, because a denial by the patient that the facility contradicted would achieve nothing.

The limit is the sealing provision’s good cause rule: a patient who sues on a matter connected to the treatment opens the file.