Court Opinion

ID: 9767916
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 05:34:05.050814+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:30:34.612017
License: Public Domain

EAGER, Judge
(concurring in result).
In my opinion, many of the acts of Dr. Freeman did not constitute malpractice, nor did they have any true relationship with professional services performed or omitted. Some of them were willful, malicious acts, such as: sending the patient out to steal her husband’s property; putting on swimming parties in the nude; taking from her by persuasion or otherwise, $14,000 of her money for the purchase of a farm for him (even though it may later have been paid back “under threat”) and taking also other sums including her child support money; the promoting of an actual and acted out hostility between her and her husband; causing and directing her to give perjured testimony; and, finally, the carrying on of a notorious illicit intercourse with her over an extended period of time. Some of these acts probably constituted crimes.
Regardless of all psychiatric theories, whether of transference, withdrawal, or otherwise, this relationship (and the doctor’s acts) passed the point at which anyone could logically believe that they had any reasonable connection with professional *765services, or that they were being performed in the course of any legitimate treatment. In other words, the “treatment” ceased, and an ordinary, person-to-person, invasion of plaintiff’s rights, civil or criminal or both, began. As an illustration of this, one of the expert witnesses said, according to the opinion: “ * * * that a psychiatrist should no more take an overnight trip with a patient than shoot her”; and, so far as I am concerned, a similar conclusion may well be applied to many of the doctor’s other acts.
Despite my view that much of this conduct played no part, affirmatively or negatively, in any professional relationship but was born of a vicious mind, there is no way in which the doctor’s acts can be separated and classified by us in this case. They were all put into evidence in one lump in the original suit; the verdict-directing instruction covered substantially all of the defendant’s acts; the verdict was thus founded upon all such acts, although the case was submitted under the guise of negligence. Incidentally, we note that one does not conduct an illicit adventure with a woman over a period of months through negligence, professional or otherwise.
No effort was made in the trial of the original action to separate the breaches of professional obligations from such other acts, either by objections to the evidence or by instructions; and, as the principal opinion points out, the insurer makes no claim here “that part of what Dr. Freeman did is covered and part is not.” Under these circumstances, our hands are tied. However, so far as I am concerned, I do not want this Court to go on record as even inferring that all of the acts of this defendant arose out of or had any true connection with professional services, performed or omitted.
Under the circumstances, I concur in the result only.