91172.pdf

Duty to Inform vs Client Confidentiality 179

California standards for involuntary civil commitment and, thus, was not hospi
talized. Further, the campus police detained Poddar briefly, yet released him after
deciding that he presented no imminent and immediate harm. Two months later,
after Tatiana Tarasoff returned from vacation, Poddar killed her. Tarasoff's parents
initiated lawsuits for wrongful death against Dr. Moore, his supervisors, campus
police, and the Board of Regents, claiming that their daughter should have been
made aware of the danger that Poddar posed. The defendants claimed that Tarasoff
was not their patient and that warning her would have breached confidentiality.
The California Supreme Court, in response to their defense, would forever change
the way psychology and related fields view confidentiality. The Court held that

when a therapist determines, or pursuant to the standards of his profession should de-

termine, 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.

(Tarasoff v. Regents of the University of California. 1976, p. 34)

The Court added that this duty would entail warning the intended victim or others

who may alert the victim to the potential danger, notifying the police, and/or

taking any other steps that may be necessary under the circumstances to protect the

victim.

Following Tarasoff, a number of similar cases began to emerge in other parts

of the country. In general, Tarasoff was used as the precedent case in the courts'

rulings that therapists had a duty to warn third parties under certain circumstances

(Kagle & Kopels, 1994). Thus, the dilemma posed by confidentiality versus duty

to warn has profound nationwide implications at this time. While some states had

statutes that provided for the protection of confidentiality, Tarasoff caused many of

these statutes to be amended, allowing for exceptions in cases where a danger to

a third party was a factor. Thus, it generally stands that confidentiality should or

must be breached when a therapist believes that disclosing information is neces-

sary to protect others from a "clear, imminent risk of serious physical or mental

injury, disease, or death" (Kagle & Kopels, 1994, p. 219). The precise implications

of the duty to warn, as are presented in the following section, remain somewhat

vague.

Forensic Psychology and Policy Implications

Before discussing the implications of Peter's case, let us examine several of the
issues more broadly related to the "duty to warn." First, while courts have generally
ruled that therapists have a duty to warn, the specifics of this duty have not been
clearly elaborated. Court rulings have ruled inconsistently as to whether the duty
is limited to specific victims or more generally to all third parties. In other words,
exactly which third parties the therapist is responsible for protecting varies widely
among jurisdictions (Kagle & Kopels, 1994). Several states and federal jurisdictions