The state Supreme Court has declined to further expand upon the narrow line of facts imposing a physician’s duty to third parties, ruling in a case over whether doctors who treat prison inmates have a duty to warn at-risk corrections officers that an inmate has a communicable disease.
In a 33-page opinion penned by Justice Thomas G. Saylor, a 5-1 Supreme Court reversed the state Superior Court, opting not to carve out a new cause of action as to doctors’ third-party liability that would extend beyond the doctor-patient relationship. Absent from the plaintiff’s pleadings was a “broader policy assessment,” which Saylor said would be needed if the court were to consider imposing a new, affirmative duty on physicians that would involve third-party interventions.
