people portrayed or that of the hospital superintendent (the inmates' legal guardian), Massachusetts claimed that this permission could not take the place of release forms from the inmates. Wiseman was also accused of breaching an "oral contract", giving the state government editorial control over the film. A New York state court allowed the screening, but in 1968, Massachusetts Superior Court judge Harry Kalus ordered the film to be recalled from distribution and all copies destroyed, once more citing the state's concerns about violations of the patients' privacy and dignity. Wiseman appealed to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, which in 1969 allowed it to be shown only to doctors, lawyers, judges, health-care professionals, social workers, and students in these and related fields. Wiseman appealed to the United States Supreme Court, which refused to hear the case. Wiseman believes that the government of Massachusetts (concerned that the film portrayed a state institution in a bad light) intervened to protect its reputation. The state intervened after a social worker in Minnesota wrote to Massachusetts governor John Volpe, expressing shock at a scene involving a naked man being taunted by a guard. The dispute was the first known instance of a film being banned from general American distribution for reasons other than obscenity, immorality, or national security. It was also the first time that Massachusetts recognized a right to privacy at the state level. Wiseman has said, "The obvious point that I was making was that the restriction of the court was a greater infringement of civil liberties than the film was an infringement on the liberties of the inmates." Little changed until 1987, when the families of seven inmates who had died at the hospital sued the hospital and state. Steven Schwartz represented one of the inmates, who was "restrained for 2½ months and given six psychiatric drugs at vastly unsafe levels—choked to death because he could not swallow his food." Schwartz has said "There is a direct connection between the decision not to show that film publicly and my client dying 20 years later, and a whole host of other people dying in between," "... in the years since Mr. Wiseman made Titicut Follies, most of the nation's big mental institutions have been closed or cut back by court orders" and "the film may have also influenced the closing of the institution featured in the film." In 1991, Superior Court judge Andrew