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Robinson v. Health Midwest Development Group3/6/2001
espondent to her with respect to its medical staff's treatment and care of Schmidt. The question then is whether, absent a special relationship between the parties, the public policy factors enunciated in Hoover's Dairy could be applied to one or more of the specifications of negligence alleged by the appellant in her petition such that a reasonable fact finder could find that the respondent owed a duty to the appellant on which to predicate liability under a theory of general negligence. In this regard, the appellant alleged, inter alia:
[Respondent] carelessly and negligently failed to maintain proper supervision and/or monitoring of Verlea R. Schmidt after she received medical treatment and failed to inform Verlea Schmidt that she was not to operate a motor vehicle after leaving [Respondent's] facility when it knew or should have known that she was a hazard to herself and others, including this Plaintiff [the appellant].
We read this specification of negligence as alleging that the respondent's medical staff owed a duty not only to Schmidt, but to the general public, to warn Schmidt not to drive while under the influence of Compazine. Applying the Hoover's Dairy public policy factors to this specification, we find that, on the undisputed and disputed facts, the appellant could conceivably establish at trial a duty owed to her as a member of the general public by the respondent's medical staff. As such, because summary judgment would not lie if the appellant could succeed on any specification of negligence, Moreland, 995 S.W.2d at 516, the trial court erred in granting summary judgment to the respondent based on a finding that the appellant could not establish a duty owed.
Although no Missouri cases have decided the precise issue presented in our case, our appellate courts have on several occasions addressed the issue of whether a health care provider could ever be found to owe a duty of care to the general public. See Sherrill v. Wilson, 653 S.W.2d 661, 666-67 (Mo. banc 1983); Millard, 14 S.W.3d at 46-48; Young v. Wadsworth, 916 S.W.2d 877, 878-79 (Mo. App. 1996); Bradley, 904 S.W.2d at 306-312; Matt v. Burrell, Inc., 892 S.W.2d 796, 801 (Mo. App. 1995). In Sherrill, the Missouri Supreme Court addressed the issue of whether the treating physicians of a state mental institution owed a duty to the general public in deciding whether to grant a release to an involuntary patient. 653 S.W.2d at 664. There a state mental patient had been released and while on release murdered the plaintiff's son, prompting her to file a wrongful death action against the state hospital, its administrators, and its treating physicians. Id. at 662. In holding that there was no duty owed by the treating physicians to the mother of the victim, as a member of the general public, on which to base liability, the court stated, " he defendant physicians should not be held liable for even foreseeable civil damages simply because they might be found to have exercised negligent professional judgment in permitting [the patient] to leave the premises." Id. at 667.
We do not read Sherrill as being an absolute bar to a suit by a member of the general public against a physician for negligence in the treatment and care of a patient. We believe that any fair reading of Sherrill would indicate that it is limited in scope to medical decisions by a treating physician employed by the state concerning whether to release an involuntary patient from a state hospital. It is clear to us that the holding in Sherrill was predicated on public policy considerations not found in cases involving the treatment and care of a private patient. Specifically, the court, analogizing the role of a treating physician for the state in d
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