Opinion
No. 128514
March 21, 2005
MEMORANDUM OF DECISION
By amended complaint filed on September 23, 2004, the plaintiff, Christine Roesler, in her capacity as an executrix of the estate of her husband, Steven Roesler, and individually, brought an action in three counts against the defendants, Louis H. Reich, M.D. and Louis H. Reich, M.D., P.C., d/b/a Louis H. Reich, M.D. (collectively referred to as "the defendants").
In count one, the plaintiff alleges, inter alia, the following. On December 5, 2001, the plaintiff's decedent, Steven Roesler, was shot to death by William Adamson. At the time, Adamson was under the psychiatric treatment and care of the defendants. During the course of his treatment, Adamson stated at various times that he presented a danger to others and experienced harmful and dangerous thoughts. Specifically, Adamson stated that he had obsessions, fascinations and delusions concerning the decedent. These obsessive thoughts were hostile in nature due Adamson's dissatisfaction with work the decedent had performed for Adamson, and Adamson's belief that the decedent was engaging in inappropriate sexual conduct with his young employees. Moreover, Adamson had stated that he wanted to become close friends with the decedent. Adamson's desire to establish this friendship contained overtones of a sexual nature. According to the plaintiff when Adamson was not taking his prescribed medication, the defendants knew that Adamson presented a danger to himself and to others. On December 3, 2001, Adamson's wife informed the defendants that Adamson was not taking his medication and was acting in a bizarre manner. In addition, the defendants had knowledge and/or should have known that the decedent was an identifiable victim through Adamson's statements. The plaintiff alleges that the defendants owed a duty to the decedent to control Adamson and to prevent the fatal assault upon the decedent. The plaintiff alleges further that the assault was due to the defendant's failure to exercise a degree of care and skill ordinarily exercised by psychiatrists.
In count two, the plaintiff, in her capacity as executrix of decedent's estate, alleges that under the doctrine of respondeat superior, Louis H. Reich, M.D., P.C., is responsible for the negligent acts of its employee and/or agent, Louis H. Reich, M.D. In count three, the plaintiff, in her capacity as an individual, alleges a claim for loss of consortium.
On October 7, 2004, the defendants filed a motion to strike the plaintiff's amended complaint in its entirety accompanied by a memorandum of law in support. On October 27, 2004, the plaintiff filed an objection and memorandum of law in opposition.
I DISCUSSION
"The purpose of a motion to strike is to contest . . . the legal sufficiency of the allegations of any complaint . . . to state a claim upon which relief can be granted." (Internal quotations omitted.) Fort Trumbull Conservancy, LLC v. Alves, 262 Conn. 480, 498, 815 A.2d 1288 (2003). The role of the trial court in ruling on a motion to strike is "to examine the [complaint], construed in favor of the [plaintiff], to determine whether the [pleading party has] stated a legally sufficient cause of action." (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Dodd v. Middlesex Mutual Assurance Co., 242 Conn. 375, 378, 698 A.2d 859 (1997). "In ruling on a motion to strike, the court is limited to the facts alleged in the complaint." (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Faulkner v. United Technologies Corp., 240 Conn. 576, 580, 693 A.2d 293 (1997). "[W]hat is necessarily implied [in an allegation], [however], need not be expressly alleged." (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Lombard v. Edward J. Peters, Jr., P.C., 252 Conn. 623, 626, 749 A.2d 630 (2000). "A motion to strike admits all facts well pleaded; it does not admit legal conclusions or the truth or accuracy of opinions stated in the pleadings." (Emphasis in original; internal quotation marks omitted.) Faulkner v. United Technologies Corp., supra, 240 Conn. 588. "[I]f facts provable in the complaint would support a cause of action, the motion to strike must be denied." (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Broadnax v. New Haven, 270 Conn. 133, 173, 851 A.2d 1113 (2004).
The defendants move to strike the plaintiff's entire amended complaint on the ground that no legal duty exists between the defendants and the plaintiff's decedent and, therefore, the plaintiff's claims fail to state a cause of action because: (1) there is no physician-patient relationship between the plaintiff's decedent and the defendants; and (2) the defendants owed no duty to divulge confidential medical information in the absence of an identifiable victim.
A Legal Duty of Psychiatrist to Third Parties
The defendants argue, inter alia, that they did not owe a duty to the decedent, who was a "[n]on-patient [t]hird [p]arty," and that no special relationship existed between the defendants and the decedent. Moreover, they assert that "a duty could only extend to a plaintiff who was an identifiable victim, a member of a class of identifiable victims, or within the zone of risk to an identifiable victim who the psychiatrist had reason to know would be harmed by the patient." (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Furthermore, they contend that psychiatrists have a duty not to disclose confidential communications or record, except where it is determined that the patient poses a substantial risk of imminent physical injury to himself or to others. The defendants rely primarily on Fraser v. United States, 236 Conn. 625, 674 A.2d 811 (1996), to support their arguments. The plaintiff counters that the defendants owed a duty to the decedent because "Adamson's behavior was foreseeable with a substantial risk of imminent harm to the plaintiff's decedent . . ." Furthermore, Adamson had expressed various hostile emotions and delusional thoughts directed towards the decedent, and the defendants were aware of these expressions.
In Fraser, our Supreme Court discussed the following issue certified to it by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, "whether a psychotherapist has a duty to exercise control to prevent an outpatient, who was not known to have been dangerous, from inflicting bodily harm on a victim who was neither readily identifiable nor within a foreseeable class of victims." Id., 630. In Fraser, the plaintiff alleged that a medical center was negligent in its treatment of a psychiatric patient, who ultimately stabbed and fatally wounded her decedent, in that the medical center had failed to warn others of the patient's propensity to be violent, and had failed to take necessary and reasonable actions to control the patient in order to protect others. In coming to its conclusion that the medical center had no duty to exercise control over the patient to prevent him from harming the decedent, the court relied on four reasons: (1) "[Connecticut] decisions defining negligence do not impose a duty to those who are not identifiable victims; (2) in related areas of our common-law, we have concluded that there is no duty except to identifiable persons; (3) policy reasons inherent in the psychotherapeutic relationship and in the due process rights of mental patients counsel against imposing expansive duties to exercise control over such patients; and (4) courts in other jurisdictions have overwhelmingly declined to extend any duty to control to encompass harm to unidentifiable third persons." Id., 632.
In discussing the first reason, the court stated that "[e]xisting Connecticut precedents impose only a limited duty to take action to prevent injury to a third person. Our point of departure has been that absent a special relationship of custody or control, there is no duty to protect a third person from the conduct of another . . . In any determination of whether even a special relationship should be held to give rise to a duty to exercise care to avoid harm to a third person, foreseeability plays an important role . . . Although . . . no universal test for [duty] ever has been formulated . . . our threshold inquiry has always been whether the specific harm alleged by the plaintiff was foreseeable to the defendant . . . Thus, initially, if it is not foreseeable to a reasonable person in the defendant's position that harm of the type alleged would result from the defendant's actions to a particular plaintiff, the question of the existence of a duty to use due care is foreclosed, and no cause of action can be maintained by the plaintiff." (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Id., 632-33.
The court further explained that "in only one instance has this court considered what relationships might trigger a special duty of care to protect third parties from personal harm. In Kaminski v. Fairfield, [ 216 Conn. 29, 578 A.2d 1048 (1990)], . . . it is significant that we described the duty . . . as a duty arising out of a psychotherapist's knowledge of a patient's specific threats against a specific victim, whom the patient subsequently killed. Kaminski v. Fairfield, supra, 37. Our conclusion in Kaminski that the injured third party had not established a duty to protect him from physical harm rested in part on the fact that he . . . was not a specifically identifiable victim . . . We therefore have no precedent for imposing a duty on psychotherapists to exercise control over an outpatient in the absence of a showing that the victim was either individually identifiable or, possibly, was either a member of a class of identifiable victims or within the zone of risk to an identifiable victim." Fraser v. United States, supra, 236 Conn. 633-34.
As to the third reason, the court explained that "[c]onsiderations of public policy, which undergird the judicial determination of the scope of duty in the law of negligence, likewise suggest that psychotherapists should not be held liable to third parties who are not foreseeable victims . . . We deem it . . . appropriate to balance the interests of those injured by psychiatric outpatients against the interests of the mental health profession in honoring the confidentiality of the patient-therapist relationship; see General Statutes §§ 52-146d through 52-146j; and in respecting the humanitarian and due process concerns that limit the involuntary hospitalization of the mentally ill . . . Whatever that balancing process may indicate in other circumstances, it counsels against the imposition of liability for harm to unidentifiable victims or unidentifiable classes of victims of outpatients with no history of dangerous conduct or articulated threats of dangerous behavior." (Citations omitted; emphasis added.) Fraser v. United States, supra, 236 Conn. 634-35.
The court, noting that the facts of the case indicated that the patient never threatened the decedent or any member of his family, there was no apparent provocation for the fatal assault, and there was no evidence that it was foreseeable that the patient would commit an act of violence against the decedent, held that the "medical center owed no duty to control [the patient] so as to prevent [the patient's] assault on [the decedent]. The medical center neither knew or had reason to know that [the patient] would attack [the decedent] because [the decedent] was not an identifiable victim, a member of a class of identifiable victims or within the scope of risk to an identifiable victim." Id., 637.
As the Supreme Court later explained: "[i]n Fraser, we delineated the scope of the duty of a psychotherapist to control a psychiatric outpatient to prevent the patient from committing an imminent act of violence against a third person . . . To protect the integrity of the therapeutic relationship, we held that a duty to disclose the substantial risk of such an act of violence would arise only if the third person was an identifiable victim or a member of a class of identifiable victims . . . In defining the scope of duty of a psychotherapist, we deliberately focused on the centrality of the therapeutic relationship between a mental health professional and his or her patient . . . We declined to jeopardize that relationship except under the most compelling circumstances. Such an exception was warranted, we held, in the event of an imminent risk of serious personal injury to identifiable victims." (Citations omitted; emphasis added.) Jacoby v. Brinckerhoff, 250 Conn. 86, 96, 735 A.2d 347 (1999). In the present case, the plaintiff alleges, inter alia, that this case comes within this exception in that the decedent was identifiable because Adamson had indicated during treatment that he had obsessions, delusions and fascinations about the decedent. Moreover, the plaintiff, as previously noted, specifically details that Adamson had thoughts about the decedent that were hostile in nature.
In several decisions subsequent to Fraser, the Superior Court has denied motions to strike claims against mental health professionals when the plaintiffs have alleged facts sufficient to bring themselves or their decedents within the identifiable victim exception. One example is Brown v. Smith, supra, Superior Court, complex litigation docket at New Britain, Docket No. X03 CV 000503181 (August 7, 2001, Aurigemma, J.), in which a psychiatric patient killed four of his co-workers before killing himself at the Connecticut lottery headquarters. The plaintiff, administratrix of one of the co-worker's estate, alleged that the defendant, the patient's psychiatrist, failed to properly treat and control the patient, "and failed to warn the plaintiff's decedent or the other employees . . . that [the patient] was likely to present a substantial risk to their safety." Id. Specifically, the plaintiff alleged that the patient "expressed anger about his work . . . continued to be obsessed with his work problems and depressed about the consequences, was not sleeping or eating well because of them. [The patient] entertained vengeful thoughts towards his employers and showed increased agitation and paranoia about his work . . . and stated that he had dreams of violent outbursts, fears of violent outbursts, mostly directed against himself but also directed to others, especially when he returns to work." (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Id. The court found that "the foregoing allegations could be interpreted as threats against a specifically identifiable group, [the patient's] fellow employees. The plaintiff's decedent was a member of that group." Id. "[W]hen a therapist determines, or pursuant to the standards of his profession should determine, that his patient presents a serious danger of violence to another, he incurs an obligation to use reasonable care to protect the intended victim against such harm, and the discharge of this duty may include the duty to warn the intended victim or others likely to apprise the victim of the danger." Id. In denying the defendant's motion to strike, the court held that the "[c]omplaint alleges the imminent risk of serious personal injury to an identifiable class of victims, thus presenting circumstances which are sufficiently compelling from a public-policy viewpoint to warrant jeopardizing the patient-psychiatrist relationship." Id. The court determined that the plaintiff's allegations were sufficient to identify his coworkers as a class of victims, thereby allowing the plaintiff's claim to withstand a motion to strike. See also Geremia v. Boyd, Superior Court, judicial district of Waterbury, Docket No. CV 00 0161877 (July 6, 2001 Holzberg, J.) ( 30 Conn. L. Rptr. 123); Schlegel v. New Milford Hospital, Superior Court, judicial district of Litchfield, Docket No. CV 96 0071253 (April 20, 1998, Pickett, J.T.R.)
In the present case, the plaintiff alleges that the psychiatric patient, Adamson, has identified the decedent individually, without reference to a group or class, and therefore, creates a more compelling situation than in Brown; Adamson allegedly identified a particular individual, the decedent, as the object of his delusions, fascinations and obsessions. Moreover, the plaintiff alleges that Adamson's ideations were violent in nature. The defendants argue, however, that the plaintiff has not explicitly alleged that Adamson directly communicated his delusions, fascinations and obsessions about the decedent to the defendants. It bears repeating, "[w]hat is necessarily implied [in an allegation] need not be expressly alleged." (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Lombard v. Edward J. Peters, Jr., P.C., supra, 252 Conn. 626. The plaintiff alleges that "during the course of William Adamson's treatment," Adamson allegedly stated multiple times his delusions, fascinations and obsessions about the decedent. It is necessarily implied that "during the course of . . . treatment" refers to the treatment administered by the defendants; and it is necessarily implied that Adamson related his obsessions, during that course of treatment, to the defendants.
In light of the holding, and discussion in Fraser, the holding and facts in Brown, and construing the complaint most favorably for the plaintiff, the court concludes that the plaintiff has alleged sufficient facts to claim a duty was owed by the defendants to the decedent. Therefore, the defendants' motion to strike is denied as to all counts, as their motion was premised on the defendant's assertion that they did not owe a duty to the decedent.
II CONCLUSION
For all the foregoing reasons, the defendants' motion to strike is denied.
D. Michael Hurley, JTR