Opinion ID: 6357225
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Althaus (5): The overall public interest in the proposed solution

Text: It goes without saying that sound public policy favors taking all reasonable steps to safeguard against Plaintiffs' tragic harm. Kwiatkowski's conduct in this case was surpassingly reckless and reprehensible, exposing untold numbers of patients to a potentially fatal disease. Furthermore, the risk of Kwiatkowski conducting himself at another hospital as he did at UPMC was reasonably foreseeable, as was the seriousness of the harm that such conduct could inflict and the number of victims it might affect. Of course, there is a competing public interest in ensuring that there are adequate health care providers in all beneficial forms to provide efficient, affordable care. While institutional CSA registrants like UPMC tend to be large and capable of absorbing such claims by any number of means, the same may not be true of all staffing agencies. We must acknowledge that to impose equivalent duties as to both Defendants is tantamount to imposing equivalent exposure, which presumably will more frequently present an existential threat to a staffing agency than it will to a larger health care provider. As well, that Maxim and presumably many other staffing agencies are not CSA registrants situates them outside the orbit of health care institutions upon which the federal government has imposed a duty to report.  For these reasons, and those set forth above at greater length, we find that public policy generally weighs in favor of imposing the duty upon UPMC in light of its preexisting obligation and the policy judgments it reflects. However, given the specter of the all but necessary indeterminacy of the duty Maxim would bear and the fact that the federal government in enacting laws and regulations reflective of its assessment of public policy declined to impose such an obligation on non-registrants, we find that this factor militates against imposing a duty upon Maxim.