Pettis R W
Program in Psychiatry and the Law, Massachusetts Mental Health Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston 02115.
Bull Am Acad Psychiatry Law. 1992;20(4):427-37.
In three recent cases, hereinafter referred to as the driving cases, the courts have taken up the issue of whether a psychotherapist should be held liable for negligent diagnosis and treatment and failure to warn third parties of a patient's potential danger to others in the operation of an automobile. These cases will be discussed as (1) an extension of the Tarasoff decision, which established psychotherapists' duty to protect third parties from patients' violent acts, and (2) what some commentators regard as a move toward holding the mental health professions to a standard of strict liability. How far have the courts in these cases extended the Tarasoff duty to protect and is the specter of strict liability real or imagined? This review finds the court adhering to a professional negligence standard as altered by the Tarasoff case in which the court applied the Restatement of Torts (Second) section 315 and held that the psychotherapist-patient relationship is a special relationship requiring a duty to protect or warn. And while a negligence standard ostensibly applies, the conclusions reached in these cases reveal an undeniable trend toward results one might expect to accrue under a strict liability standard.
在最近的三个案例（以下简称“驾驶案例”）中，法院探讨了心理治疗师是否应对疏忽诊断和治疗以及未能就患者在驾驶汽车时对他人的潜在危险警告第三方承担责任的问题。这些案例将被视为：（1）对塔萨夫案判决的延伸，该判决确立了心理治疗师保护第三方免受患者暴力行为侵害的责任；（2）一些评论家认为这是朝着要求心理健康专业人员承担严格责任标准迈出的一步。在这些案例中，法院将塔萨夫保护责任延伸到了何种程度，严格责任的幽灵是真实存在还是想象出来的？本综述发现，法院坚持塔萨夫案改变后的专业疏忽标准，在该案中，法院适用了《侵权法重述（第二版）》第315条，并认定心理治疗师与患者的关系是一种特殊关系，需要承担保护或警告的责任。虽然表面上适用疏忽标准，但这些案例得出的结论显示出一种不可否认的趋势，即朝着人们可能预期在严格责任标准下产生的结果发展。
