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Case ReportARTICLES

Tarasoff and the Dangerous Driver: A Look at the Driving Cases

Roderick W. Pettis
Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law Online December 1992, 20 (4) 427-437;
Roderick W. Pettis
JD, MD
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Abstract

In three recent cases, hereinafter referred to as the driving cases, the courts have taken up the issue of whether a psychotherapist should be held liable for negligent diagnosis and treatment and failure to warn third parties of a patient's potential danger to others in the operation of an automobile. These cases will be discussed as (1) an extension of the Tarasoff decision, which established psychotherapists' duty to protect third parties from patients' violent acts, and (2) what some commentators regard as a move toward holding the mental health professions to a standard of strict liability. How far have the courts in these cases extended the Tarasoff duty to protect and is the specter of strict liability real or imagined? This review finds the court adhering to a professional negligence standard as altered by the Tarasoff case in which the court applied the Restatement of Torts (Second) §315 and held that the psychotherapist-patient relationship is a special relationship requiring a duty to protect or warn. And while a negligence standard ostensibly applies, the conclusions reached in these cases reveal an undeniable trend toward results one might expect to accrue under a strict liability standard.

  • Copyright © 1992, The American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law
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Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law Online: 20 (4)
Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law Online
Vol. 20, Issue 4
1 Dec 1992
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Tarasoff and the Dangerous Driver: A Look at the Driving Cases
Roderick W. Pettis
Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law Online Dec 1992, 20 (4) 427-437;

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Tarasoff and the Dangerous Driver: A Look at the Driving Cases
Roderick W. Pettis
Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law Online Dec 1992, 20 (4) 427-437;
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