Duty to warn

A duty to warn is a concept that arises in the law of torts in a number of circumstances, indicating that a party will be held liable for injuries caused to another, where the party had the opportunity to warn the other of a hazard and failed to do so.

Property ownership

Most notably, a property owner has a duty to warn persons on the property of various hazards, depending on the status of the person on the property. For example, the property owner must warn an anticipated or discovered trespasser of deadly conditions known to the property owner, but that would be hidden from the trespasser. The property owner must warn licensees of all known hazards (whether deadly or not), and must warn invitees of all dangers that the property owner can discover through a reasonable inspection of the property.

The duty to warn also arises in products liability cases, where manufacturers are held strictly liable for injuries caused by hazards inherent in the use of their products.

Clinical psychology

In clinical psychological practice in the United States, duty to warn applies to cases where the client/patient is dangerous to others and has identified targeted individual(s). In these situations, the clinician must breach confidentiality to warn the identified victim/third party about imminent danger.^[1] Additionally, the clinician can warn the local police authorities and inform them about what may eventually happen. Duty to warn originated from two rulings (1974 and 1976) of the California Supreme Court in the case of Tarasoff v. Regents of the University of California.^[2] The legal case was brought by the Tarasoff family after their daughter, Tatiana Tarasoff, was murdered by Prosenjit Poddar who was under psychological care in the university counseling center. Poddar made it known to his psychologists that he wanted to kill Tarasoff and his psychologists informed police. Upon investigation, he was released because his mental state seemed to have stabilized. Although the psychologists and police knew about his urges ahead of time, no one warned Tatiana Tarasoff, which could have prevented her death. Jablonski by Pahls v. United States extended this responsibility to include the review of previous records, which may contain history of previous violent behavior, a predictor of potential for future violence.

The application of duty-to-warn laws places clinicians in the uneasy situation of breaching another law, that of confidentiality. However, if the clinician has reasonable suspicion of what may happen, the clinician is protected from prosecution.

References

1. ^ Corey, Corey & Callahan (2007). Issues and Ethics in the Helping Professions. Brooks Cole Publishing. 
2. ^ Simon, R.I. (2001). Psychiatry and the Law. American Psychiatric Publishing.