PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Pettis, Roderick W. AU - Gutheil, Thomas G. TI - Misapplication of the <em>Tarasoff</em> Duty to Driving Cases: A Call for a Reframing of Theory DP - 1993 Sep 01 TA - Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law Online PG - 263--275 VI - 21 IP - 3 4099 - http://jaapl.org/content/21/3/263.short 4100 - http://jaapl.org/content/21/3/263.full SO - J Am Acad Psychiatry Law1993 Sep 01; 21 AB - In the years since the original Tarasoff cases created a new duty for psychotherapists toward third parties harmed by patients' violence, a series of cases nationwide—so called “driving cases”—have applied Tarasoff-like reasoning to situations where a patient injured others while driving a car. Our thesis in this paper is that such application is inappropriate since it represents an unjustified and largely unexamined assumption that driving injury is an expression of the mental-illness-derived intended violence that justifies the Tarasoff duty and its inevitable associated breach of confidentiality. We suggest to the contrary that driving cases almost invariably result from a patient's negligent driving rather than intentional violence stemming from mental illness; that clinicians in most instances have almost no capacity, training, or clinical bases on which to predict a patient's future negligence, violence aside; and that the theory of driving cases should be revised.