598 JOURNAL OF LAW AND POLICY
because the court was “convinced” that his compelling needs
were addressed through disclosure of the factual documents.
How would the court rule if, next time, it was “convinced” that
the evaluations, and not the factual material, were more likely to
meet a plaintiff’s needs? Christy should have even less
precedential value considering that the documents at issue were
confidential, inspected in camera, and without description in the
decision. One must therefore consider the possibility that Christy
was simply an application of existing self-critical analysis
doctrine, specifically the McClain and Payton rules. Perhaps the
court never intended to make new law.^117
III. THE PATIENT SAFETY ACT
A. The Patient Safety MovementThe PSA is New Jersey’s response to the relatively recent
healthcare discipline known as “patient safety,” which examines
the institutional problems in complex healthcare systems that
cause medical errors.^118 The discipline stresses that the vigilant
(^117) Judge Raymond A. Reddin, the trial Judge in Applegrad ex rel. C.A.
v. Bentolilia, see infra Part IV, raised a related point during oral arguments:
Cases are not firmly rooted in cement. They change. They are
modified.... So, what happens to this Patient Safety Act if the
Supreme Court either expands Christy, reduces the scope of Christy,
overrules Christy? Does not the legislature then have to say, we read
what the Supreme court did in this decision and notwithstanding that,
okay, forget what we said about Christy, now we say the holding in
whatever this new case is doesn’t change anything?.... [D]id not
the legislature posit the Patient Safety Act on something that isn’t
strong footed? I mean, did they anchor the boat to something that
may not be there tomorrow?
Stenographic Transcript of Proceeding Hearings, September 7, 2011, at 14–
16, Applegrad ex rel. C.A. v. Bentolila, No. PAS-L-908-08 (N.J. Super. Ct.
Law Div. Sept. 26, 2011).
(^118) See Linda Emanuel et al., What Exactly Is Patient Safety?, in 1
ADVANCES IN PATIENT SAFETY: NEW DIRECTIONS AND ALTERNATIVE
APPROACHES 4 (Kerm Henriksen et al. eds., 2008), available at
http://www.ahrq.gov/downloads/pub/advances2/vol1/Advances-Emanuel-
Berwick_110.pdf (defining patient safety both as “a discipline in the health
care sector that applies safety science methods toward the goal of achieving a