Doe v. Cochran

CourtSupreme Court of Connecticut
DecidedJuly 16, 2019
DocketSC19879
StatusPublished

This text of Doe v. Cochran (Doe v. Cochran) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Connecticut primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Doe v. Cochran, (Colo. 2019).

Opinion

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All opinions are subject to modification and technical correction prior to official publication in the Connecticut Reports and Connecticut Appellate Reports. In the event of discrepancies between the advance release version of an opinion and the latest version appearing in the Connecticut Law Journal and subsequently in the Connecticut Reports or Connecticut Appellate Reports, the latest version is to be considered authoritative.

The syllabus and procedural history accompanying the opinion as it appears in the Connecticut Law Journal and bound volumes of official reports are copyrighted by the Secretary of the State, State of Connecticut, and may not be reproduced and distributed without the express written permission of the Commission on Official Legal Publica- tions, Judicial Branch, State of Connecticut. *********************************************** DOE v. COCHRAN—DISSENT

ROBINSON, C. J., with whom McDONALD and KAHN, J., join, dissenting. I respectfully disagree with the majority’s conclusion that Connecticut physicians, with respect to the diagnosis and reporting of their patients’ sexually transmitted disease (STD) test results, owe a direct duty of care to ‘‘identifiable third parties who are engaged in an exclusive romantic rela- tionship with a patient at the time of testing and, there- fore, may foreseeably be exposed to any STD that a physician fails to diagnose or properly report.’’ In my view, the majority’s conclusion is inconsistent with our recent decision in Jarmie v. Troncale, 306 Conn. 578, 590–91, 50 A.3d 802 (2012), in which we deemed three principal considerations to be especially pertinent in determining what, if any, duty of care is owed by a medical professional to a nonpatient third party, specifi- cally (1) Connecticut precedent, (2) the foreseeability of the alleged harm, and (3) public policy considerations. Following Jarmie, I conclude instead that the defen- dant physician, Charles Cochran, owed no duty to the plaintiff, Jane Doe, and that the trial court properly granted the defendant’s motion to strike the plaintiff’s single count complaint. Because I would affirm the judg- ment subsequently rendered by the trial court in favor of the defendant, I respectfully dissent. I begin by noting my agreement with the majority’s recitation of the factual and procedural history of the case. I also note my substantial agreement with the majority’s analysis in part I of its opinion, including the standard of review and the treatment of the plaintiff’s single count complaint as having alleged both medical malpractice and common-law negligence, similar to our treatment of the action in Jarmie.1 Id., 583–86. I part ways with the majority at part II of its opinion. ‘‘The essential elements of a cause of action in negli- gence are well established: duty; breach of that duty; causation; and actual injury. . . . Contained within the first element, duty, there are two distinct considera- tions. . . . First, it is necessary to determine the exis- tence of a duty, and then, if one is found, it is necessary to evaluate the scope of that duty. . . . The existence of a duty is a question of law and only if such a duty is found to exist does the trier of fact then determine whether the defendant violated that duty in the particu- lar situation at hand. . . . If a court determines, as a matter of law, that a defendant owes no duty to a plain- tiff, the plaintiff cannot recover in negligence from the defendant. . . . ‘‘Duty is a legal conclusion about relationships between individuals, made after the fact, and imperative to a negligence cause of action. The nature of the duty, and the specific persons to whom it is owed, are deter- mined by the circumstances surrounding the conduct of the individual. . . . Although it has been said that no universal test for [duty] ever has been formulated . . . our threshold inquiry has always been whether the specific harm alleged by the plaintiff was foreseeable to the defendant. The ultimate test of the existence of the duty to use care is found in the foreseeability that harm may result if it is not exercised. . . . By that is not meant that one charged with negligence must be found actually to have foreseen the probability of harm or that the particular injury which resulted was foresee- able, but the test is, would the ordinary [person] in the defendant’s position, knowing what he knew or should have known, anticipate that harm of the general nature of that suffered was likely to result . . . . ‘‘A simple conclusion that the harm to the plaintiff was foreseeable, however, cannot by itself mandate a determination that a legal duty exists. Many harms are quite literally foreseeable, yet for pragmatic reasons, no recovery is allowed. . . . A further inquiry must be made, for we recognize that duty is not sacrosanct in itself . . . but is only an expression of the sum total of those considerations of policy which lead the law to say that the plaintiff is entitled to protection. . . . The final step in the duty inquiry, then, is to make a determi- nation of the fundamental policy of the law, as to whether the defendant’s responsibility should extend to such results.’’ (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Id., 589–90. In Jarmie, we considered whether to recognize a duty of care owed by a physician to a third party nonpa- tient. In that case, a patient crashed her vehicle into the plaintiff after blacking out while driving. Id., 580. The plaintiff in Jarmie claimed that the defendant, a physician, had breached a duty to warn the patient of the risks of a latent driving impairment associated with a particular medical condition. Id. In concluding that the physician did not owe a duty of care to a third party nonpatient, this court considered three principal factors: (1) Connecticut precedent, (2) foreseeability, and (3) public policy considerations, including the deci- sions of courts in other jurisdictions. Id., 589–91. We began in Jarmie by analyzing Connecticut prece- dent, and observed that it ‘‘is useful to view Connecticut common-law rules defining the duty of health care pro- viders in conjunction with [General Statutes] § 52-190a, the medical malpractice statute, because all of the rele- vant case law followed enactment of that provision. The statute had several purposes, including: (1) to put some measure of control on what was perceived as a crisis in medical malpractice insurance rates; (2) to discourage frivolous or baseless medical malpractice actions; (3) to reduce the incentive to health care pro- viders to practice unnecessary and costly defensive medicine because of the fear of such actions; (4) to reduce the emotional, reputational and professional toll imposed on health care providers who are made the targets of baseless medical malpractice actions; and (5) the replacement of proportional liability for the preex- isting system of joint and several liability as a central part of [tort reform], so as to remove the health care provider as an unduly attractive deep pocket for the collection of all of the plaintiff’s damages. . . . Thus, a principal goal of § 52-190a, and of tort reform gener- ally, was to limit the potential liability of health care providers. . . . ‘‘The common law, reflecting the goals of the tort reform movement and the legislature’s purpose in enacting § 52-190a, likewise disfavors the imposition of liability on health care providers.

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