White v. Harris, 2011 VT 115 (mem.)

Plaintiffs appeal from a superior court order granting summary judgment to defendant Fletcher Allen Health Care, Inc. in this wrongful death action alleging medical malpractice. The case arises from the suicide of plaintiffs’ fourteen-year-old daughter. Plaintiffs sued defendant, which employed a psychiatrist who was briefly involved with decedent’s case through a telepsychiatry research study 10 months before her suicide. Defendant moved for summary judgment asserting that its doctor had no duty to decedent when she committed suicide because there was no doctor-patient relationship. Plaintiffs argue that summary judgment was improperly granted on the issue of the duty owed to decedent by the psychiatrist. We agree, and thus reverse and remand for additional proceedings.

The psychiatrist had no interaction with plaintiffs’ decedent or any member of her treatment team after a single, ninety-minute video-conference session with the psychiatrist in August 2006. Following the session, the psychiatrist provided a diagnostic impression of decedent and set forth recommendations for an initial treatment plan that no follow-up services would be provided, and no medication prescriptions would be directly provided by the doctor. On June 10, 2007, decedent committed suicide. .

We hold that the ninety-minute consultation performed in this case created a doctor-patient relationship. We acknowledge that the telepsychiatry research study conducted by the doctor provided no treatment component directly to decedent, other than recommendations to her treatment team. However, through this consultation, a limited doctor-patient relationship was established and we conclude that a duty of due care applies. Through this consultation, defendant’s doctor assumed a duty to act in a manner consistent with the applicable standard of care so as not to harm decedent through the consultation services provided. We also hold that even if the doctor-patient contact had ended, this does not terminate the doctor’s responsibility for the consequences of any lapses in his duty to provide services consistent with the applicable standard of care for the consultation. The doctor had a duty of due care in his professional contact with decedent, which was not extinguished by any formal written act of termination of their professional relationship.

Because of the procedural posture of this case the scope of defendant’s duty and the standard of care cannot yet be determined. In evaluating the standard of care, we must not conflate the existence of a duty with the appropriate standard of care, an issue that takes us beyond the limited facts in the record before us and was not raised below. Because a duty applies to the service provided, we reverse and remand for additional proceedings