S.V. v. RWJ Barnabas Health, Inc., ___ N.J. Super. ___ (App. Div. 2025). This opinion by Judge Sabatino addressed the denial of a defense summary judgment on a claim of medical malpractice. As the opinion stated at its outset, “plaintiff S.V. alleges that 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 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 “contend[ed] 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.” After the Law Division denied summary judgment, defendants were granted leave to appeal on the limited issue of whether defendants owed a duty to plaintiff on her claims.
The Appellate Division reversed the Law Division on that issue. “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.”
J.V. had been willingly admitted to defendants’ facility after she called plaintiff and said she had found their deceased father’s gun and planned to kill herself. After being treated by multiple doctors and being prescribed several medications, her “condition evidently improved during the course of her stay,” and that at some point “J.V. expressed a desire or willingness to be discharged from Barnabas.” She was then evaluated to see whether she should be kept in the facility involuntarily. Multiple professionals concluded that her condition was such that she could not lawfully be kept involuntarily committed, and Judge Sabatino cited evidence in support of that conclusion.
As a result, J.V. was discharged. Plaintiff picked her up from Barnabas, and later that day plaintiff and J.V. “went to a pharmacy, then for a manicure, and then out to dinner, with J.V. doing all the driving.” The next day, however, while J.V. was driving with plaintiff in the passenger seat, J.V. got into a single-car crash, injuring plaintiff.
Plaintiff sued, alleging that defendants had negligently discharged J.V. too soon, which she contended constituted malpractice. Defendants moved for summary judgment, which the Law Division denied, and the Appellate Division granted leave to appeal. Applying de novo review, the Appellate Division reversed the denial of summary judgment.
Defendants’ first argument did not succeed. They relied on a statute, N.J.S.A. 2A:62A-16, that immunizes licensed mental health professionals from certain forms of liability arising from the violent acts of their patients. But Judge Sabatino said that “in Marshall v. Klebanov, 188 N.J. 23, 38 (2006), the Supreme Court held ‘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.’” Plaintiff’s expert had testified that defendants breached the standard of care. Thus, the immunity statute did not apply.
Judge Sabatino then turned to the four-part test of Hopkins v. Fox & Lazo Realtors, 132 N.J. 426, 439 (1993), for whether and when a duty exists. That test looks at “the relationship of the parties, the nature of the attendant risk, the opportunity and ability to exercise care, and the public interest in the proposed solution.” Focusing on the decision in Vizzoni v. B.M.D., 459 N.J. Super. 554 (App. Div. 2019), a somewhat similar case “in the discrete context of harm caused to a third party by a mental health professional’s patient,” the Appellate Division noted that defendants “can only be held liable for the foreseeable consequences of [their] actions.”
Foreseeability was lacking here. “The multiple professionals who evaluated J.V. at Barnabas before she was discharged found she was ready to—and desired to—go home.” J.V. had driven successfully just the day before, the day of her discharge. And plaintiff’s expert could not explain how the crash occurred. The panel concluded that the crash “appears to have been a spontaneous occurrence.”
The Hopkins factors did not alter that conclusion. Judge Sabatino said that “[t]he sibling ‘relationship of the parties’ did not make the crash foreseeable. Nor did the ‘nature of the risk’ or the ‘opportunity and ability to exercise care.’” Finally, “the fourth Hopkins factor of ‘the public interest’ weighs against the imposition of a duty to confine J.V., a voluntary patient, in the facility against her wishes. Our civil commitment laws, in fact, run contrary to plaintiff’s theory of ‘premature discharge’ liability,” as Judge Sabatino went on to explain at some length. The panel thus ordered dismissal of the complaint.