Court Opinion

ID: 9860610
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 23:27:25.954816+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:17:44.075647
License: Public Domain

JUSTICE REINHARD, specially concurring: Although I concur in the affirmance of the judgment for defendant, Thomas Kirts, M.D., I write specially because I cannot agree with the analysis of the majority, which fails to apply the duty test applicable to a defendant-physician set forth by our supreme court in Kirk v. Michael Reese Hospital & Medical Center (1987), 117 Ill. 2d 507, 513 N.E.2d 387. While the failure of the parties to adequately present the duty issue in either the circuit court or this court may have led the majority to resolve the case as the parties framed the issues, I would decide the case on a separate ground not precisely raised by the parties for a proper adjudication under existing precedent. It is the responsibility of a reviewing court to reach a just result and to maintain a sound and uniform body of precedent, which may sometimes override the considerations of waiver that stem from the adversary character of our system. (Hux v. Raben (1967), 38 Ill. 2d 223, 224-25, 230 N.E.2d 831; see also Schutzenhofer v. Granite City Steel Co. (1982), 93 Ill. 2d 208, 210-11, 443 N.E.2d 563.) All factual matters necessary to sustain the judgment of the trial court and to decide the legal issue are present in the record so that the duty issue can be properly resolved in this court. See Estate of Johnson v. Condell Memorial Hospital (1988), 119 Ill. 2d 496, 502, 520 N.E.2d 37. The majority has apparently adopted, in large part, the approach of the California Supreme Court in Tarasoff v. Regents of the University of California (1976), 17 Cal. 3d 425, 551 P.2d 334, 131 Cal. Rptr. 14, in determining the duty of a physician to a third-party nonpatient injured by the act of a patient undergoing psychiatric treatment with the physician. We need not examine authority from a foréign jurisdiction, however, as our supreme court, in Kirk v. Michael Reese Hospital & Medical Center (1987), 117 Ill. 2d 507, 513 N.E.2d 387, has established the duty of a physician in Illinois. The court in Kirk stated that “a plaintiff cannot maintain a medical malpractice action absent a direct physician-patient relationship between the doctor and plaintiff or a special relationship, as present in Renslow, between the patient and the plaintiff.” (Kirk, 117 Ill. 2d at 531, 513 N.E.2d at 399; see also Estate of Johnson v. Condell Memorial Hospital (1988), 119 Ill. 2d 496, 509, 520 N.E.2d 37.) In deciding the scope of the duty of a physician in Illinois, the supreme court considered decisions in other jurisdictions, including cases with holdings similar to the approach used by the majority herein, which focus on whether the victim is a specifically identifiable potential victim, and rejected them. Kirk, 117 Ill. 2d at 531, 513 N.E.2d at 398-99. Applying the duty analysis set forth in Kirk to the facts of this case, it is clear that plaintiff’s decedent had no direct physician-patient relationship with defendant. Nor is there a special relationship between the patient and the plaintiff’s decedent, as was present in Renslow v. Mennonite Hospital (1977), 67 Ill. 2d 348, 367 N.E.2d 1250. In Renslow, a child not conceived at the time negligent acts were committed against its mother by a doctor and a hospital’s employees was allowed to bring an action for the negligence directed against its mother. (Renslow, 67 Ill. 2d at 357-58, 367 N.E.2d at 1255.) Although I am not entirely certain whether the Renslow exception to the scope of the duty owed absent a direct physician-patient relationship is sui generis, until our supreme court more fully explains this exception I would limit any expansion of the physician’s duty to third-person nonpatients to a Renslow-type situation. For the foregoing reasons, I would affirm the circuit court’s granting of summary judgment in favor of defendant.