PHOENIX (Legal Newsline) - Reversing a decades-old precedent in a case involving a mother who murdered her twin boys, the Arizona Supreme Court said mental-health professionals can’t be held liable for failing to warn third parties about the risk of harm from a patient under their care.
A 1989 decision improperly reflected policy choices by the state Supreme Court, imposing the duty to warn based on foreseeability of harm instead of a “special relationship” with the victim. Ruling otherwise “would create an unintended incentive for mental health professionals to reflexively report patients with children to the police or to the Department of Child Safety anytime even a specter of harm arises,” the Arizona Supreme Court said.
Samuel Avitia sued Crisis Preparation and Recovery and other medical facilities that treated Mireya Alejandra Lopez (identified only as “Mother” in the opinion) after she drowned her twin 2-year-old boys in a bathtub in 2015. While doctors diagnosed Lopez as psychotic and once described her has having “an infatuation with putting things in water as part of a ritualistic cleansing of spirits,” she often left her children in the care of their grandparents and there were no reports of abuse.
A trial court dismissed Avitia’s lawsuit and an appeals court affirmed last November. Saying it needed to address “important unresolved issues of statewide concern,” the Arizona Supreme Court upheld the dismissal in an Oct. 16 decision.
Avitia argued a Crisis Preparation had a duty to warn him under a state law requiring medical professionals to report child abuse, as well as under Hamman v. County of Maricopa, a 1989 Arizona Supreme Court decision.
In Hamman, the court applied the reasoning of a California decision to rule a therapist had a duty to protect a “foreseeable victim” from harm by a patient. The Arizona legislature responded by passing a law limiting liability to cases where the patient makes an explicit threat against a specific person.
The state Supreme Court then overturned that law, saying it unconstitutionally intruded on the common law. But in subsequent decisions, the high court reasserted that foreseeability “is not a factor to be considered by courts when making determinations of duty,” rejecting “any contrary suggestions in prior opinions.”
With this decision, the Supreme Court explicitly overturned Hamman as well as the subsequent decision declaring the state law unconstitutional. The Arizona Constitution only protects common law duties known at the time it was passed, the state high court said, and Hamman created a new one in 1989.
Justice Ann Timmer partially dissented, saying the majority misread Hamman to conclude it established a duty for psychiatrists to warn third parties based on foreseeability, when the decision only laid out the scope of an existing duty. Nevertheless he would deny liability to Crisis Preparation in this case because there was no evidence the clinic knew the mother planned to kill her children.