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Board
Reply Opposes Narconon
By Michael McNutt, Enid Bureau
January 23, 1992
A request for a court order to allow Narconon Chilocco New Life Center to remain open and continue treating patients should be rejected, according to papers filed Wednesday (Jan 15) in Oklahoma County.
Narconon Chilocco should be shut down to comply with a Dec. 13 ruling by the oklahoma Board of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services instead of being allowed to remain open while lawyers for the facility appeal the board's action, the documents said.
The papers were filed in Oklahoma County District Court by board lawyer George S. Corbyn Jr., in response to Narconon Chilocco's motion seeking a stay.
District Judge Leamon Freeman is scheduled to rule on the matter Jan. 31.
Meanwhile, lawyers with the state attorney general's office have filed court papers seeking to dismiss Narconon Chilocco's appeal in Oklahoma County District Court.
Guy Hurst, an assistant state attorney general, said Narconon Chilocco filed its appeal in the wrong county. The appeal should be filed in Kay County, where the 75-bed facility is located.
Lawyers for Narconon Chilocco last week (also) filed (their) appeal in Kay County District Court.
Narconon Chilocco
lawyers have kept the facility open by going to court and filing requests
for a stay and asking a judge to over rule the mental health board's decision.
The center, which had 27 patients when the board denied its application
for certification, now has 16.
Corbyn said Narconon Chilocco's request for a stay should be denied because the facility, which has been accepting patients since February 1990, never was licensed.
He and his law firm were hired by the mental health board after Narconon Chilocco last year won a court ruling prohibiting the attorney general's office from participating at that time in the case.
In its request for a stay, lawyers for Narconon Chilocco said mental health board members did not use substantial evidence in denying the facility's request for certification and were biased because of Narconon International's ties with the Church of Scientology. (Reprinted with permission from the Daily Oklahoman, Thursday, January 16, 1992)