The plaintiff in a New Jersey mental health malpractice case claimed that the defendants prematurely released her sister (“J.V.”) from their care after J.V. was treated for seventeen days on a voluntary admission basis for psychiatric care at the defendants’ facility.
The day after her psychiatric discharge, J.V. crashed her car into a utility pole, injuring plaintiff S.V. who was a passenger in the vehicle. Plaintiff’s medical expert testified that the defendants breached their professional standards of care by releasing J.V. prematurely, while her medications were still being adjusted and her condition allegedly was not yet sufficiently stabilized (i.e., the “premature release” claim).
The trial court denied the defendants’ motion for summary judgment, rejecting the defendants’ argument that they owed no legal duty to plaintiff in the circumstances presented. The defendants appealed, and the Superior Court of New Jersey Appellate Division held in its February 28, 2025 opinion: “Under the circumstances presented, defendants could not have reasonably foreseen that J.V., shortly after her discharge, would cause a motor vehicle crash that would injure plaintiff. In addition, plaintiff’s theory of liability—alleging that J.V., a voluntary mental health patient, should not have been discharged—clashes on these facts with the terms of our civil commitment laws.”
The New Jersey appellate court explained that N.J.S.A. 2A:62A-16, enacted in 1991, immunizes licensed mental health
professionals from certain forms of liability arising from the violent acts of their patients. Nonetheless, the statutory immunity provisions of N.J.S.A. 2A:62A-16 do not immunize a mental health practitioner from potential liability if the practitioner abandons a seriously depressed patient and fails to treat the patient in accordance with accepted standards of care in the field; if a physician deviates from the applicable standard of care in the treatment of a patient and that deviation proximately causes harm to the patient, then the physician is liable for damages caused by his or her professional negligence.
“Here, the record fails to substantiate that this one-car motor vehicle crash would have been reasonably foreseeable to defendants. The multiple professionals who evaluated J.V. at Barnabas before she was discharged found she was ready to—and desired to—go home. The assessments reported that she was not currently suicidal or homicidal. As we noted above, her demeanor appeared by that point to be calm and rational. There is no evidence that she was engaging in the sort of “growling” or other odd behavior allegedly observed by plaintiff when J.V. was driving the car on September 18, 2017. Although J.V.’s prescriptions had been adjusted during her seventeen-day stay, the record does not reflect those medications, as adjusted, were ineffective nor that those medications had side effects consistent with J.V.’s alleged behaviors directly prior to the car crash … even if reasonable minds might disagree as to whether J.V. was suitable for discharge, the record is bereft of evidence that the September 18, 2017 car crash was reasonably foreseeable to J.V.’s providers. Breach or no breach, the injury must have been reasonably foreseeable to support liability.”
“Given the absence of this critical element of foreseeability, we discern no grounds to impose a legal duty upon these defendants to protect third parties such as plaintiff who could have been passengers injured in a vehicle driven by
J.V. after her discharge.”
Source S.V. v. RWJ Barnabas Health, Inc., Docket No. A-3598-23.
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