Weaver Symposium to Examine Ramifications of 'Tarasoff'

Where should mental health professionals draw the line in their responsibility to protect the community from dangerous patients? That’s the question that will be examined at a daylong seminar scheduled for Friday, March 17, in the Great Hall of TUC.

The symposium, which begins at 8 a.m., is presented by the UC College of Law’s Glenn M. Weaver Institute of Law and Psychiatry.

Thirty years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court made a landmark ruling in Tarasoff v. Regents of the University of California which placed upon mental health professionals the obligation to protect the public from violent acts by their patients.

"For mental health professionals, this is the most important decision in mental disability law," says Dr. Douglas Mossman, administrative director of the Weaver Institute as well as director of the Division of Forensic Psychiatry at Wright State University’s Boonshoft School of Medicine. "The reason is that when you know that someone is at serious risk for committing a violent act, this decision makes you responsible for protecting the target of that act."

Of course, such a ruling is fraught with the notion that mental health professionals can accurately anticipate the actions of their patients. Because of those implications, there is no shortage of topics to discuss relating to Tarasoff.

"This is all part of a larger trend in tort law that makes individuals who haven’t done anything violent themselves responsible for acts of violence, if they can be tied to the act and it can be said that the act should have been foreseeable," says Mossman.

Top experts in the field from across the United States will be making presentations on Friday to an audience primarily made up of regional mental health practitioners, lawyers and students.

Those presenting, and their presentation titles include:

• Michael L. Perlin - New York Law School, "You Got No Secrets to Conceal: Considering the Application of the Tarasoff Doctrine Abroad"
• John Monahan - University of Virginia School of Law, "Tarasoff and the Science of Violence Risk Assessment"
• Douglas Mossman, "Critique of Pure Risk Assessment, or Kant Meets Tarasoff "
• Christopher Slobogin - University of Florida Levin College of Law, "Reconstructing Tarasoff as a Duty to Commit"
• Robert I. Simon - Georgetown University School of Medicine, "Imminent Violence: The Myth of Short-Term Prediction in Psychiatry and Law"
• Sarah M. Buel - University of Texas School of Law, and Margaret B. Drew - University of Cincinnati College of Law. "Ethical Responsibility and Tort Liability for Practicing Lawyers under Tarasoff: A Domestic Violence Standard"