• The Korean Society of Law and Medicine
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.331-393
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• 2010

Psychiatrists who treat violent or potentially violent patients may be sue for failure to control aggressive outpatients and for the discharge of violent inpatients. Psychiatrists may be sued for failing to protect society from the violent acts of their patients if it was reasonable for the psychiatrists to have known or should have known about the patient's violent tendencies and if the psychiatrists could have done something that could have safeguarded in public. The courts of a number of jurisdictions have imposed a duty to protect the potential victims of a third party on persons or institutions with a special relationship to that party. In the landmark case of Tarasoff v Regents of University of California, the California Supreme Court held that the special relationship between a psychotherapist and a patient imposes on the therapist a duty to act reasonably to protect the foreseeable victims of the patient. Under Tarasoff, when a therapist has determined, or under applicable professional standards should determine, that a patient poses a serious threat of violence to another, he incurs an obligation to use reasonable care to protect the intended victim against such danger. In addition to a Tarasoff type of action based on a duty to warn or protect foreseeable victims of psychiatric outpatients, courts have also imposed liability on mental health care providers based on their custody of patients known to have violent propensities. The legal duty in such a case has been stated to be that where the course of treatment of a mental patient involves an exercise of "control" over him by a physician who knows or should know that the patient is likely to cause bodily harm to others, an independent duty arises from that relationship and falls on the physician to exercise that control with such reasonable care as to prevent harm to others at the hands of the patient. After going through a period of transition, from McIntosh, Thompson and Brady case, finally, the narrow rule of requiring a specific or foreseeable threat of violence against a specific or identifiable victim is the standard threshold or trigger element in the majority of states. Judgements on these kinds of cases are not enough yet in Korea, so that it may be too early to try find principles in these cases, however it is hardly wrong to read the same reasons of Tarasoff in the judgements of Korea district courts. To specific, whether a psychiatric institute was liable for violent behavior toward others depends upon the patients conditions, circumstances and the extent of the danger the patients poses to others; in short, the foreseeability of a specific or identifiable victim. In this context if a patient exhibit strong violent behavior toward others, constant observation should be required. Negligence has been found not exist, however, when a patient abruptly and unexpectedly attack others or unidentifiable victim. And the standard of conduct that is required to meet the obligation of "due care" is based on what the "reasonable practitioner" would do in like circumstances. The standard is not one of excellence or superior practice; it only requires that the physician exercise that degree of skill and care that would be expected of the average qualified practitioner practicing under like circumstances. All these principles have been established in cases of the U.S.A and Japan. In this article you can find the reasons which you can use for psychotherapist's liability for failure to protect third person in Korea as practitioner.