Court Opinion

ID: 9711946
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 04:42:44.278981+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:08.587845
License: Public Domain

O’Connor, J.
(dissenting). I do not agree with Justice Lynch that the hospital was entitled to summary judgment on the ground that there is no substantial question of material fact bearing on proximate causation. I do agree with him, however, that the hospital did not owe a duty to the plaintiff to exercise care for her safety in her home. Summary judgment for the hospital should be affirmed.
“There can be negligence only where there is a duty to be careful,” Theriault v. Pierce, 307 Mass. 532, 533 (1940); and whether there is a duty to be careful is a question of law. Monadnock Display Fireworks, Inc. v. Andover, 388 Mass. 153, 156 (1983). Scandura v. Trombly Motor Coach Serv., Inc., 370 Mass. 612, 618 (1976). See Schofield v. Merrill, 386 Mass. 244 (1982). In determining whether the law ought to provide that a duty of care is owed by one person to another, we look to existing social values and customs, and to appropriate social policy. Id. at 246-254.1 agree with Justice Lynch that the imposition on a hospital of a duty of care to nonhospital patients off the hospital premises has no source in existing social values and customs and, particularly because of its likely adverse effect on the cost of hospital care, is unsound public policy. I am aware of no case in which such a duty has been imposed.
As the Supreme Court of Washington said in the case of Pedroza v. Bryant, 101 Wash. 2d 226, 236 (1984) (en banc), “ [t]he hospital holds itself out to the community as a competent provider of medical care. The hospital does not hold itself out as an inspector or insurer of the private office practices of its *870staff members. The delineation of staff privileges by the hospital can only affect the procedures used by staff members while they are inside hospital walls. The public [including employees of the hospital] cannot reasonably expect anything more.” (Emphasis in original.)