It has been over a month since I last blogged. Time to catch up briefly.
I never did read von Bertalanffy's book. Instead I read and analyzed a bunch of California and Ohio supreme court rulings about duty to warn. For my term paper I chose a California ruling dubbed the Tarasoff rule. This rule holds a mental health professional liable in a situation where a patient confides his intention to harm a third party (that is legal speak for someone with whom the professional has no relationship). The professional is liable only if: 1) the patient ends up harming the third party and; 2) the professional did not warn the third party. I supplemented my case law (case law is court established law) analysis with some statutory law (statutory law is legislatively established law) analysis. I then made some applications for physical therapists. I hope to publish the paper.
I'm curious what my vast readership thinks. Consider a scenario where Bob Jones is being treated by Jack Handy (psychologist) for depression after a rough break-up with his girlfriend. What is the psychologist's duty when Bob makes specific claims that he is "going to bring a knife over to her house and end it all?" According to traditional Anglo-American common law there is no duty to protect between strangers. However, the California Supreme Court made an exception to the common law, stating that when a psychologist enters into a relationship with a patient he then has a duty to protect the public from the patient.
What do you think?
