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Marshall v. Klebanov6/22/2005
nt behavior."
Statement to New Jersey Senate S. 3063, (November 19, 1990).
The Legislative statement went on to explain that " nder current law, the therapist's legal responsibility to warn of a patient's potential for violence is unclear. . . . Thus, a therapist may be placed in the untenable position of being subject to liability under two competing theories: for failing to warn a potential victim . . . or, in the alternative . . . for disclosing confidential communications between the therapist and the patient." Ibid. The statement further explained that the "bill serves as a specific guideline for practitioners caught in this quandary and protects them from liability under appropriate circumstances." Ibid.
As Chief Justice Weintraub stated many years ago, our obligation is "to give effect to the obvious purpose of the Legislature, and to that end 'words used may be expanded or limited according to the manifest reason and obvious purpose of the law. The spirit of the legislative direction prevails over the literal sense of the terms.'" New Capitol Bar & Grill Corp. v. Div. of Employment Sec., 25 N.J. 155, 160 (1957) (quoting Alexander v. New Jersey Power & Light Co., 21 N.J. 373, 378 (1956)).
The plain purpose of the statute in question is to codify the practitioner's duty to "warn and protect" without fear of violating ethical restraints by disclosing confidential information. That is the codification of "existing professional standards of practice" that Governor Florio referenced in his "Reconsideration and Recommendation Statement." L. 1991, c. 270. The purpose of the statute was not to immunize mental health practitioners from all liability for a patient's suicide, regardless of the reasonable likelihood of suicide or the gravity of the practitioner's deviation from the pertinent standard of care. As the bill indicated, the act provides immunity only from "certain civil suits." Senate Committee Substitute for S. 3063, (adopted March 11, 1991). Under defendant's construction of the statute, for example, a psychiatrist who prescribed the wrong medication that causes the patient to kill herself or another person would not be liable in any civil action. This is not a result the Legislature contemplated.
Plaintiff's expert, in this case, has advanced a standard of care to which plaintiff claims defendant failed to adhere. The contention is that defendant abandoned Mrs. Marshall and consequently failed to take any steps to protect her from suicide. Should a jury find that defendant, in fact, abandoned Mrs. Marshall, failed to treat her with sufficient regularity, and that the failure was a proximate cause of her suicide, defendant would be liable.
We do not necessarily disagree with defendant's contention that what Mrs. Marshall revealed to the doctor and what all of Mrs. Marshall's close relatives observed did not indicate that Mrs. Marshall's suicide was imminent. What concerns us is the absence of any observations by defendant just prior to the suicide. Even though defendant recognized that Mrs. Marshall's condition required weekly monitoring, the doctor failed to treat Mrs. Marshall weekly and instead scheduled an appointment almost one month after his initial session with the patient. If defendant had been following Mrs. Marshall on a weekly basis, as he himself found was necessary, then the immediacy of Mrs. Marshall's suicidal intentions might have been perceived by him and defendant may have incurred a duty to "warn and protect" under the statute. Assuming the truth of plaintiff's proofs, therefore, it was defendant's own negligence that possibly prevented recognition of an imminent suicide threat. Thus, defendant's lack-of-i
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