Duty to warn & protect

In 1969 a graduate student named Prosenjit Poddar told his therapist he intended to kill a young woman, Tatiana Tarasoff. No one warned her. She was killed — and the resulting lawsuit created the most famous rule in mental-health law: the duty to warn and protect.

The case is Tarasoff v. Regents of the University of California. It actually produced two rulings. Tarasoff I (1974) established a duty to warn the identifiable victim. On rehearing, Tarasoff II (1976) broadened this to a duty to protect — the therapist must take reasonable steps to protect a foreseeable victim, which may include warning the victim, notifying police, or hospitalizing the client. The court's ringing line: "protective privilege ends where the public peril begins."

The trigger is the foreseeable harm standard: when a client communicates a serious threat of physical violence against a reasonably identifiable victim, the counselor's confidentiality gives way to a duty to protect that third party. Key elements examiners test: (1) a serious and imminent/foreseeable threat, (2) a clearly identifiable potential victim, and (3) reasonable protective action.

Progeny (later cases) expanded and refined the rule: Jablonski v. United States (1983) added a duty to review prior records and predict dangerousness even without an explicit threat; Ewing v. Goldstein (2004, CA) extended the trigger to a credible threat communicated by a family member. Importantly, duty-to-warn requirements vary by state — some mandate it, some merely permit it — so counselors follow their own jurisdiction's statute.

Clinical Pearl: Tarasoff moved the field from a duty to warn (1974) to a broader duty to protect (1976) — "protective privilege ends where the public peril begins" — triggered by a serious, foreseeable threat to an identifiable victim, with specifics governed by state law.