Court Opinion

ID: 9713688
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 05:20:12.33288+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:19.957102
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE HARRISON, dissenting: My colleagues expound at length about the need to protect medical providers from liability to some indeterminate class of nonpatient third parties. They fail to see that that is not what this case is about at all. Plaintiff here was not a chance bystander or random member of the general public. He was a relative of the therapist’s patient, he was the alleged cause of the patient’s psychological difficulties, and, according to the complaint, the therapist specifically arranged to have him participate in the patient’s therapy sessions as part of the patient’s treatment program. Where a third party has the kind of relationship with the patient that John Doe had here and the therapist chooses to make that third party an integral part of a patient’s treatment, as the therapist in this case did, the majority’s concerns about compromising patient confidentiality and divided loyalty make no sense. It was the therapist who orchestrated what happened here, she did so with the patient’s consent, and once John Doe began participating in the sessions at the therapist’s behest, protecting the patient’s condition against disclosure to third parties ceased to be a consideration. Divulging the patient’s complaints to John Doe was, in fact, the very foundation of the therapist’s treatment plan. As the majority notes, the therapist hoped that the shock effect of the patient’s disclosures would force Doe to confess. As it turned out, no confession was forthcoming. The plan failed. The damage that John Doe allegedly sustained as a result was foreseeable by any meaningful standard. The likelihood of injury was great, the burden of guarding against that injury was slight, and there would be no significant adverse consequences from placing that burden on the therapist. The majority claims that approving plaintiff’s cause of action “would mean that therapists generally, as well as other types of counselors, could be subject to suit by any non-patient third party who is adversely affected by personal decisions perceived to be made by a patient in response to counseling.” 183 Ill. 2d at 282. This is patently untrue. A cardinal principle of our common law system is that a holding can have no broader application than the facts of the case that gave rise to it. Cates v. Cates, 225 Ill. App. 3d 509, 513 (1992), aff’d, 156 Ill. 2d 76 (1993), citing Nix v. Smith, 32 Ill. 2d 465 (1965). The case before us today does not involve “therapists generally,” but a licensed clinical psychologist. As previously indicated, plaintiff was not simply “any third party,” but a family member who was used as a tool in plaintiff’s treatment program. Moreover, the harm alleged here did not result from “personal decisions perceived to be made by a patient,” whatever that means. It was the product of a failed course of treatment formulated by a mental health professional. In O'Hara v. Holy Cross Hospital, 137 Ill. 2d 332, 342 (1990), this court held that a hospital has a duty to protect a parent from harm where the parent is invited to participate in her child’s care and treatment. I see no reason why we should not recognize a similar duty on the part of the psychologist who has been sued in this case. I would further hold that the plaintiff should be allowed to seek damages from that psychologist for lost society and companionship based on intentional and direct interference with a family relationship. The judgment of the appellate court should therefore be affirmed.