Court Opinion

ID: 9658601
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 21:06:09.721995+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:13:56.957991
License: Public Domain

COYNE, Justice
(dissenting).
I dissent. It seems to me that the majority has forgotten the nature of an insurance policy. It is a contract between insurer and insured and the scope of its coverage is dependent upon their intent; the complainant is not a party and has no interest in the policy. The policy with which we are here concerned is a policy of liability insurance in which St. Paul Fire & Marine *703Insurance Company promises to pay only those amounts Ronald W. Love is legally required to pay for damages resulting from professional services Love, a licensed psychologist, provided or should have provided. The vulnerability of the victim is not the criterion for determining the ambit of insurance coverage. No matter how sympathetic we may be toward the victim’s plight, our limited role on appeal is to determine the insurance contract’s meaning as intended by Love and the insurer. Smith v. St. Paul Fire & Marine Ins. Co., 353 N.W.2d 130 (Minn.1984). I cannot believe that either St. Paul F & M or Love intended or anticipated that the insurer should pay on Love’s behalf for damages he caused by stepping out of his professional role and deliberately and intentionally engaging in conduct flagrantly violative of professional ethics, reprehensible, and, perhaps, criminal. Minn.Stat. § 609.36 (1988). Until today this court has recognized that the opportunity presented by a professional relationship for acts of sexual contact for the satisfaction of the insured professional’s prurient interests does not involve professional services provided or which should have been provided. Smith, 353 N.W.2d at 132.
The majority implies that because this patient appeared on the therapist’s doorstep with a sexual vulnerability, the subsequent sexual contact must fall within the provision of professional services, saying that the claim that "the therapist’s sexual acts worsened the patient’s condition for which treatment was sought” suggests a “ ‘failure on the part of the insured doctor [therapist] to discover or treat an ailment that should have been discovered or treated.’” Majority slip op. at 701 (quoting Smith, 353 N.W.2d at 132). Notwithstanding, however, that the plaintiff has couched the titles of the several counts of her complaint in terms of negligence and breach of contract as well as the intentional infliction of harm, the thrust of the complaint has nothing to do with the discovery or treatment of her ailment. Rather, the crux of each and every count of the complaint — the language describing the acts causing the plaintiff’s injury — is exactly the same: “Defendant Love willfully and knowingly induced Plaintiff to attempt sexual intercourse with him at which time Defendant Love willfully and knowingly penetrated her.” That is the allegation of an intentional tort, not the failure to discover or treat the patient’s malady.
In order to bring Love’s outrageous behavior within the policy coverage, the majority resorts to professional jargon, characterizing Love’s conduct as the “mishandling of the transference phenomenon”, which the majority declares to be an occupational hazard. Id. The rationale is defective, it seems to me, on two levels. In the first place the assumption is that the “transference phenomenon” is unique to the relationship between a therapist (either a psychologist or a psychiatrist). However, it is certainly not unheard of for a patient to fall in love with a surgeon who has relieved a physical problem or a family doctor or gynecologist or lawyer consulted in regard to marital problems. Neither is it unheard of for the physician or the lawyer to fall in love with the patient. I am unaware of the conduct of any of those professionals having been characterized as the “mishandling of the transference phenomenon” or succumbing to an occupational hazard. Until now, such circumstances have always been recognized for what they are — conduct removed from the professional relationship. While the majority finds the extension of coverage to Love’s misconduct no more incongruous than insuring a driver against the risks inherent in exceeding the speed limit or driving while drunk, the comparison seems to me both incongruous and foolish. The driver, though negligent, does not intend a collision. The therapist, on the other hand, commits an intentional tort. A more apposite example might be to say that the presence of money subjects a bank teller to the occupational hazard of embezzlement; but, of course, that risk has not heretofore been insurable.
In the second place the majority’s position requires expansion of the definition of “professional services” well beyond its ordinary meaning. The majority premises coverage on the absence of an express ex-*704elusion of coverage for “this particular peril” — i.e., the “mishandling of the transference phenomenon.” Id. at 702. Surely, the majority cannot be declaring that an insurer must identify and specifically exclude from coverage every wrongful act which could conceivably be alleged to fall within the scope of “professional services” as that term is now defined by this majority. Yet the majority’s analysis requires precisely that conclusion. The commonly understood meaning of the term “professional services” means the services of one engaged in one of the learned professions or in an occupation requiring a high level of training and proficiency. It connotes services promoting the welfare of the client or patient. A deliberate intentional tort can hardly fall within that definition and here Love himself acknowledges that he stepped outside of his professional role when he engaged in intimate sexual contact with his client. • Accordingly, I find shocking the majority’s attempt to distinguish Smith as a case in which the “doctor indulged in sex for personal reasons undiluted by any treatment considerations” when Love agrees that his intimate sexual contact with his client was for personal reasons which had nothing to do with any treatment considerations. Majority slip op. at 701.
At a time when most professions are expending much time and effort in an attempt to eliminate instances of professional misconduct, this majority not only justifies it but permits the miscreant to escape the piper’s bill by burdening a third party with its payment.