Court Opinion

ID: 9743810
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 21:44:19.570178+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:43.824250
License: Public Domain

CHIEF JUSTICE MILLER, specially concurring: I concur in the judgment of the court. According to the third-amended complaint, the plaintiff sought treatment from the defendant, who held himself out as a licensed psychologist, and the two subsequently engaged in sexual activity during the course of the therapy. The plaintiff alleges that the sexual relationship developed for a variety of reasons connected to the treatment. The complaint in the present case is thus anchored in a specific factual milieu: that the sexual conduct forming the basis for the plaintiff’s action was the consequence of what is alleged to be the therapist’s negligent, or willful and wanton, rendition of professional services. It is the therapist-patient relationship that defines the duty in the case at bar. The defendant makes no challenge to the established principle that a patient who claims injury resulting from sexual activity with a psychotherapist may state a cause of action for professional malpractice. As demonstrated in the amicus brief submitted in behalf of the plaintiff, sexual contact between a therapist and a patient during the course of treatment has been universally condemned by the courts and by the psychotherapeutic profession. With respect to that portion of the third-amended complaint alleging psychotherapeutic malpractice, it should be noted that the only question before us, and the only one resolved by today’s decision, is the question certified by the trial judge: whether this court’s earlier opinion in Rickey v. Chicago Transit Authority (1983), 98 Ill. 2d 546, bars recovery of damages for emotional distress in the limited set of circumstances alleged here. We have, in the present case, answered that question in the negative. It seems somewhat incongruous, however, to characterize such behavior as negligent or willful and wanton. It is perhaps more accurately described as exploitation, the term adopted by the General Assembly in its recent legislation recognizing a cause of action for sexual misconduct committed by psychotherapists against patients as a consequence of the professional treatment (see Ill. Rev. Stat. 1989, ch. 70, pars. 801 through 807), and I would apply that designation, rather than the labels “negligent” or “willful and wanton,” in describing the basis for the plaintiff’s cause of action.