Tarasoff--Duty to warn

[wxl31]

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Have a quick question on this. In class, we learned that you are obligated to personally warn the person in danger. Just ran across a UW question that said you can just notify the authorities. Which is right?

 

[WhoisJohnGalt]

Have a quick question on this. In class, we learned that you are obligated to personally warn the person in danger. Just ran across a UW question that said you can just notify the authorities. Which is right?

How can we personally warn them? After someone has just told us they intend to murder someone else, don't you think they'll be somewhat reluctant to give us their cell phone number? Our job is to notify the authorities, and it's THEIR job to warn them-- they have access to resources we don't. Plus we'd be putting ourselves in danger by getting directly in the middle of it.

EDIT: Now that I've thought about it some more, I think your confusion is coming from the word "personally". The duty is to warn THEM (the recipient of the threat) personally, not for US (the doctors) to personally do the warning. Basically, it's saying that we can't just refer them to a psych hospital. We have to make sure that the recipient of the threat is aware of the threat; but we certainly don't have to (and shouldn't) be the person making them aware of it. The police are much more equipped to deal with that situation than we are.

 

[wxl31]

EDIT: Now that I've thought about it some more, I think your confusion is coming from the word "personally".

Yes, this was where my confusion was. My professor was talking about not delegating to someone else and I also thought he meant that we had to call the intended victim as well.

Thanks, I appreciate it.

 

[lord_jeebus]

From Tarasoff v. Regents of University of California

"When a therapist determines, or pursuant to the standards of his profession should determine, that his patient presents a serious danger of violence to another, he incurs an obligation to use reasonable care to protect the intended victim against such danger. The discharge of this duty may require the therapist to take one or more of various steps, depending upon the nature of the case. Thus it may call for him to warn the intended victim or others likely to apprise the victim of the danger, to notify the police, or to take whatever other steps are reasonably necessary under the circumstances."

Note that this is a duty to protect and not merely a duty to warn.

 

[ginger60]

I believe that in the Tarasoff case the doc did tell the police/authorities but didn't follow-up or ensure that the threatened person was aware of the threat, with the end result being that the threatened person wasn't made aware of the threat by the authorities and ended up getting killed. So, yeah, you don't have to personally warn the person--notifying the police may be enough but if it isn't you need to make sure they are made aware of the threat via other means.