Opinion ID: 6357225
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Althaus (4): The consequences of imposing a duty upon the actor

Text: With regard to the consequences of the duty asserted, Defendants principally and not unreasonably invoke the specter of broad, effectively unlimited liability spanning both time and geography. The Superior Court rejected this argument, declining to accept that the imposition of a duty to report is so onerous as to be 'entirely unworkable,'  and noting that the court did not cower from claims of exposure to 'limitless liability unchecked by the passage of time, proximity, or scope of harm' for what could be a mere clerical error. Walters , 144 A.3d at 119 (quoting UPMC's Brief). Imposition of a duty is but the first step in imposing liability, the court explained. Id. Recovery hinges on proof of breach and causation, and we recognize that it becomes more difficult to prove the latter with the intervening circumstances that come with the passage of time. Id. at 119-20 .  While we find merit in the Superior Court's observations and restraint, Althaus nonetheless requires the court at least to weigh the consequences of imposing a duty against the other factors. Furthermore, the question of law that is presented concerns duty alone. Thus, in assessing whether sound policy dictates that a duty should lie, a court's conclusion should not be influenced by ancillary considerations regarding the applicable standard of care and what constitutes breach thereof, nor should it fall back on speculations regarding whether and to what extent difficulties in proving causation might protect against overwhelming liability. These factors have no direct bearing upon the legal question of duty and are properly reserved for a fact-finder after the development of an adequate record upon which to base such determinations. See Emerich , 720 A.2d at 1044 (While the existence of a duty is a question of law, whether there has been a neglect of such duty is generally for the jury.). Threshold legal determinations like the existence of a duty save parties from the burdens of a trial where one is not warranted. To downplay the likelihood that the plaintiff will succeed in establishing breach of duty and causation says nothing about whether a party should be exposed to a full-dress trial in the first instance. Put simply, Defendants' fear of runaway liability warrants more detailed consideration than the Superior Court undertook. Before this Court, Defendants do not stop with the observation that one small error could lead to tremendous liability, although that is the primary thrust of their argument. UPMC also asks this Court to consider just how far the proposed duty to report might reach, asking, inter alia , whether liability extend[s] to vehicular accidents that the diverter might cause due to being impaired, or indeed to the full spectrum of criminal activity in which a drug user might engage? Brief for UPMC at 29-30. Defendants also note that the lower court did not restrict its ruling to the timely completion and submission of Form 106. Instead, it held that Defendants' duty extended to report[ing] Kwiatkowski's criminal conduct to the DEA and/or other law enforcement agencies for prosecution . Walters , 144 A.3d at 121 (emphasis added). Thus, even if UPMC satisfied the relatively discrete task of completing Form 106, it could not be confident that it had fully shielded itself from liability in a given case. It is insufficient to answer UPMC's concern regarding the breadth of its exposure, as Plaintiffs do, Just fill out the form, at least when taken in tandem with the Superior Court's more broadly-worded account of the duty. Similarly, Maxim underscores the relative unboundedness of asserting a vague duty to report malfeasance to law enforcement generally, and suggests that such a broad duty confounds our circumspect approach to creating novel common-law duties. The question of consequence weighs heavily in this case, much as it did in Phillips . There can be no dispute that imposing the duty upon one or both Defendants comes at potentially great cost caused by the transient error of only one agent or employee. However, as in Phillips and R.W. , the potential for tremendous harm to innocent patients cannot be gainsaid. We must ask who should bear the cost under extraordinary circumstances like these, and we must choose between imposing that cost upon health care providers, who have the opportunity (and in UPMC's case, the obligation) to take steps to prevent the harm, or upon the victims and society at large. The scope and severity of the risk at issue are self-evident. Thus, we focus upon the burden of imposing the duty upon each  Defendant. With respect to UPMC, we cannot agree with Plaintiffs that fulfilling the duty as described by the Superior Court is tantamount to no burden at all on the basis that it already has a federal obligation to report. UPMC has a legal obligation to report only to the DEA and no one else. However, Plaintiffs advocate, and the lower court imposed, a broader duty encompassing a parallel and facially independent obligation to report Kwiatkowski and others like him to law enforcement agencies outside the DEA. This open-ended duty raises challenging questions regarding which (and, for that matter, how many) agencies must be contacted, how many such contacts must be made, and how much information must be provided. We hesitate to impose a duty so broad and indeterminate. Measuring UPMC's limited reporting obligation under federal law against the foreseeable risk of harm, we find that this factor favors imposing some duty upon UPMC. However, we think it neither necessary nor prudent to adopt outright the Superior Court's formulation. Below, we take up the proper scope of the duty to be imposed. With respect to Maxim, however, the question is more complicated. Unlike UPMC, Maxim has no defined statutory or regulatory legal obligation to report the diversion of controlled substances by one of its employees. Thus, the only apparent way to frame Maxim's duty would be as the Superior Court did-in the form of a broad, generalized mandate to report some quantum of information concerning the diversion in some fashion to some law enforcement agency or agencies, precisely the problem we identify above with respect to UPMC. As addressed below, UPMC's particular legal obligations illuminate a way to meaningfully circumscribe its duty. The same is not true with respect to Maxim. Thus, we find that the quantum, breadth, and durability of liability Maxim would face for the violation of such a duty somewhat outweighs the foreseeable risk of harm. This is especially so given that cases such as these will always, or almost always, involve a registrant who is chiefly responsible for controlled substances, and thus injured parties typically will not be entirely denied an avenue for relief.