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McKenzie v. Hawaii Permanente Medical Group6/10/2002
o categorically state, as a matter of law, that the physician did not owe a duty to the plaintiffs under any set of facts. Id. at 1029.
Similarly, in Welke, the Michigan Court of Appeals reversed a grant of summary judgment in favor of the defendant doctor where the doctor had allegedly improperly prescribed controlled substances to a patient who killed the plaintiff in an auto accident. Welke, 375 N.W.2d at 404; see also Welke v. Kuzilla, 365 N.W.2d 205, 208 (Mich. App. 1985) (Bronson, J., dissenting). The doctor had also injected his patient, a friend who was driving the doctor's car at the time of the accident, with an "unknown substance" the night before. Welke, 375 N.W.2d at 404.
Finally, in Watkins v. United States, 589 F.2d 214 (5th Cir. 1979), the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, applying Alabama law and considering a challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence, affirmed a verdict in favor of a plaintiff who was injured in an automobile accident proximately caused by the defendant physician's prescription to the driver of a large amount of Valium several days earlier. Id. at 217. In so doing, the Fifth Circuit emphasized the trial court's finding that the prescribing physician had failed to inquire into the patient's recent psychiatric history, which the appeals court implied would have "plainly preclude the prescription." See id.
It is widely known, even among the lay public, that individuals who abuse controlled substances can be impaired by those substances. It is also widely known that individuals who abuse controlled substances often seek to obtain access to these substances by a variety of means, including misrepresenting their need for the drugs to physicians and other health care providers. The facts in the cases relied upon by the McKenzies implicate the foregoing concerns where it was foreseeable that the patient "could not be expected to take the medicine prescribed . . . in the manner intended." See Gooden, 651 S.W.2d at 365. Finally, the serious adverse effects of drug abuse and the fact that abusers of controlled substances can be dangerous to themselves and others cannot be seriously disputed; for this reason, the prescribing of controlled substances is already highly regulated to a degree not present with other medical interventions. Thus, the prescribing of controlled substances represents a unique set of circumstances and implicates policy considerations not applicable to the case at bar. Accordingly, without deciding whether we would carve out an exception in a case involving controlled substances, we hold that a physician does not owe a duty to non-patient third parties injured in an automobile accident caused by the patient's adverse reaction to a medication negligently prescribed by the physician three days earlier where the negligence involves prescribing decisions as that term is used in this opinion.
2. Negligent Failure to Warn of Driving Risks
If Dr. Washecka owes any duty to the McKenzies in this case, such a duty arises from negligently failing to warn Wilson about the risk of operating a vehicle while under the influence of the medication. The strongest support for this proposition in the case law can be found in Kaiser v. Suburban Transportation System, 398 P.2d 14 (Wash. 1965). In Kaiser, the defendant physician prescribed a sedating antihistamine to his patient, whom the physician knew to be a bus driver. Id. at 15-16. After taking the first dose of the medication the following morning, the driver went to work and was involved in an accident after falling asleep while driving the bus. Id. at 19 (Hale, J., dissenting). The driver had apparently felt groggy before the accident but continued to dr
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