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Robinson v. Health Midwest Development Group3/6/2001
etermining whether to release an involuntary patient as judicial in nature, stated:
Judges are immune from civil liability for damages. It would be cynical to say that they are favored only because the rules have been made by fellow judges. The reason, rather, is one of policy. Every obstacle to a judicial officer's detached and unencumbered judgment must be removed. There must be protection not only against what might be proved but also against what might be claimed. Decisions about temporary or permanent release of involuntary detainees should be likewise unencumbered and unfettered, at least against negligence claims. Id. at 665.
Obviously, a private physician is not performing a quasi-judicial function when he or she is determining and providing the appropriate treatment and care for a patient.
In Young, the Eastern District of this court was confronted with the issue of whether a physician owed a duty of care to the plaintiffs who were injured as a result of an accident involving a motor vehicle driven by a patient of the defendant-physician, where the patient had blacked out while driving. 916 S.W.3d at 878. The plaintiffs alleged that the physician was negligent and was liable to them in damages in that he had a duty to warn the patient not to drive, which he breached, resulting in their injuries. Id. On appeal, the court affirmed the trial court's dismissal of the plaintiffs' petition for failure to state a cause of action. Id. at 879. In doing so, the court did not decide the issue of whether the plaintiffs had pled sufficient facts, which if true, would have established a duty owed by the physician to the plaintiffs as members of the general public. Id. at 878. Instead, its holding was based on the insufficiency of the pleadings alleging that the failure of the physician to warn the patient not to drive was the proximate cause of the plaintiffs' injuries. Id. at 878-79. As to this issue, the court found that because there is no duty to warn of dangers which are open and obvious or which are commonly known, the physician's failure to warn the patient not to drive because of the blackouts he was experiencing, which were found to be well known to the patient, was not the proximate cause of the plaintiffs' injuries. Id. Rather, the court found that it was the patient's act of driving, when he knew he was subject to blackouts, that was the proximate cause of the plaintiffs' injuries. Id. at 878. In the case at bar, the summary judgment record would indicate that the issue of whether Schmidt was aware or should have been aware of the dangers of driving after receiving an injection of Compazine was in dispute such that Young would not support the trial court's award of summary judgment in our case on the issue of duty.
In Bradley, this court addressed the issue of whether a psychologist owed a common-law duty to warn the appropriate authorities that a client presented a serious danger of future abuse to a readily ascertainable victim. 904 S.W.2d at 306. In that case, a minor child that had been sexually abused by her stepfather sought damages, through her next friend, from the psychologists who had been treating the stepfather for their negligent failure to warn the appropriate authorities that he presented a serious danger of future harm to her in that he had admitted to prior acts of abuse. Id. at 305-06. After looking at decisions from other jurisdictions that favored a duty to warn and after applying the Hoover's Dairy factors, this court recognized that "the relationship between psychologists and their patients is the kind of 'special' relationship on which liability can be based for failure to warn." Id. at 311. We went on to hold that:
hen a psy
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