Ashworth v. Branford

Summary

The Connecticut Supreme Court held that the trial court incorrectly struck all of counts two through six of the plaintiff's wrongful death complaint as medical malpractice: certain allegations—failure to control the patient, failure to warn the identifiable victim, and premature discharge when the fifteen-day emergency commitment had not expired—sound in ordinary negligence. As a matter of first impression, the court held that a mental health care provider who actually knows a patient poses a substantial risk of imminent physical harm to an identifiable nonpatient owes that person a limited duty to take reasonable, nonmedical protective steps, such as warning or controlling the patient. Claims challenging the adequacy of the provider's evaluation, diagnosis, treatment, or discharge decisions remain medical malpractice barred by Jarmie v. Troncale because the decedent was not a patient; the court declined to review the gross medical negligence count as inadequately briefed. The judgment was reversed in part and remanded. Justice Ecker concurred in part and dissented in part, agreeing with the ordinary-negligence result but criticizing Jarmie as wrongly decided and dissenting from the refusal to address the gross negligence count.