Court Opinion

ID: 9781281
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-30 16:28:24.438154+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:34:23.523449
License: Public Domain

DILLARD, Judge,
concurring specially.
While I agree with the majority’s conclusion that the trial court did not err in denying Peterson’s motion for summary judgment, I believe that the majority’s opinion could be misconstrued as creating an affirmative duty for a mental healthcare professional to involuntarily commit a potentially suicidal patient. Accordingly, I specially concur in the judgment of the Court but write separately to emphasize that summary judgment was properly denied because genuine issues of material fact exist as to whether Peterson negligently breached the duty of care owed to Reeves prior to her discharge from hospitalization and whether such negligence was a proximate cause of Reeves’s attempted suicide.
As is the case with all physicians, a psychiatrist’s duty “is that inherent in the doctor-patient relationship, which, if breached by failure to exercise the requisite degree of skill and care, with that failure being the proximate cause of the injury, will result in liability.”2 And “[ijnextricably entwined with [the concept] of... proximate cause is a notion of foreseeability, not foreseeability as to the particular harm but that some harm would occur.”3 Moreover, no matter what test is used in determining the issue of proximate cause, “all of the tests envision some reasonable apprehension of harm.”4 Furthermore, questions of proximate cause ordinarily are “reserved solely for *379the jury and should not be resolved as a matter of law except in plain and indisputable cases.”5 This is not such a case.
Here, Peterson narrowly characterizes Reeves’s claim as being that Peterson breached his duty of care by failing to involuntarily commit Reeves and further argues that Reeves failed to provide evidence of proximate cause. But the record shows that Peterson’s duty of care was not so limited and that there was sufficient evidence of proximate cause to withstand summary judgment. Indeed, the expert affidavit of Dr. William Reid, attached to Reeves’s complaint, avers that Peterson breached his duty of care by negligently failing “to adequately assess and appreciate [Reeves’s] psychiatric condition and risk of harm to herself while she was a resident of Horizons and prior to discharging her to the community.” Dr. Reid’s affidavit further states that Reeves’s suicide attempt could have been avoided if Peterson had not breached his duty of care.
In addition, Reeves’s other expert witness, Dr. Robert Alpern, testified in his deposition as to several ways in which Peterson breached his duty of care to Reeves. Specifically, Dr. Alpern testified that Peterson breached his duty of care by failing to perform a proper suicide risk assessment on Reeves prior to her being discharged despite being aware that she had recently attempted to jump from her balcony into an empty swimming pool, had sent her children to live elsewhere, gave away all her clients at her place of employment, had repeatedly expressed guilt for not taking care of her deceased mother, and had experienced hallucinations in which voices told her that she needed to burn in hell. Indeed, Dr. Alpern testified that such behavior put Reeves at a high risk of suicide “that even a second year medical student would recognize.” Dr. Alpern further testified that Peterson breached his duty of care by failing to stabilize Reeves in a proper medication regimen despite being cognizant of the fact that her continuing psychotic behavior and hallucinations indicated that her current medication regimen was ineffective. Importantly, Dr. Alpern also testified that Peterson breached his duty of care by not being available for consultation on the day that his patient Reeves was discharged, or at the very least, by not arranging for another psychiatrist to be available, if he was not, to evaluate Reeves on the day of her discharge. Finally, Dr. Alpern concluded that Peterson’s numerous breaches of his duty of care resulted in the foreseeable harm of Reeves attempting suicide.
Construed against Peterson, the evidence and inferences drawn therefrom show that, when she was discharged from Horizons, *380Reeves was at a high risk for committing suicide. Furthermore, the evidence shows that Peterson breached his duty of care owed to Reeves by failing to perform a proper suicide risk assessment, failing to stabilize her in a proper medication regimen, and failing to be available for consultation, or arrange for another psychiatrist to be available, on the day that Reeves was discharged. These breaches of his duty of care created a reasonable apprehension of harm sufficient to withstand summary judgment.6
Relying on Bradley Center v. Wessner,7 Peterson argues that a psychiatrist cannot be held liable for a patient who commits or attempts to commit suicide if the psychiatrist had no physical control over the patient at the time of the incident. In Bradley Center, our Supreme Court carved out a narrow exception to the general rule requiring privity between a plaintiff and a physician in a medical-malpractice action by holding that
where the course of treatment of a mental patient involves an exercise of “control” over him by a physician who knows or should know that the patient is likely to cause bodily harm to others, an independent duty arises from that relationship and falls upon the physician to exercise that control with such reasonable care as to prevent harm to others at the hands of the patient.8
However, this Court has previously rejected an attempt to apply Bradley Center in a context similar to this case and with good reason.9 In essence, Bradley Center marked an expansion of a physician’s duty of care, albeit a very narrow one, by holding that such a duty extended to third parties injured by a patient whom the physician knew to be dangerous and over whom the physician exercised control. I therefore cannot agree with Peterson that the opinion also simultaneously limits the duty of care owed by a physician to his own most mentally troubled patients.
*381Accordingly, I concur with the majority that the trial court did not err in denying Peterson’s motion for summary judgment but do so for reasons slightly different than those expressed in the majority’s opinion.
I am authorized to state that Judge Boggs joins in this opinion.

 Brandvain v. Ridgeview Inst., Inc., 188 Ga. App. 106, 112 (2) (372 SE2d 265) (1988); see OCGA§ 51-1-27.

 Brandvain, 188 Ga. App. at 115 (3) (b) (punctuation omitted).

 Id. (punctuation omitted).

 Purcell v. Breese, 250 Ga. App. 472, 475 (1) (552 SE2d 865) (2001).

 See id. (holding that summary judgment was not warranted given some evidence that plaintiff’s son’s suicide was proximately caused by defendant’s failure to evaluate him prior to releasing him from hospitalization); Brandvain, 188 Ga. App. at 116 (3) (b) (holding that if the intervening act of suicide “is a reasonably foreseeable consequence of the defendant’s negligent conduct, the legal, causal connection between that conduct and injury is not broken” (punctuation omitted)).

 250 Ga. 199 (296 SE2d 693) (1982).

 Id. at 201 (punctuation omitted).

 See Purcell, 250 Ga. App. at 476 (3) (holding that a physician had a duty to prevent harm to mental patient even though patient was not under physician’s control at time patient committed suicide).