# Copithorne v. FRAMINGHAM UNION HOSPITAL.

> Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court · March 14, 1988 · 401 Mass. 860

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9711946

## Case

- **Full name:** Starr Copithorne vs. Framingham Union Hospital
- **Court:** Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court
- **Decided:** March 14, 1988
- **Citations:** 401 Mass. 860; 520 N.E.2d 139
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Dissent by O'Connor
- **Judges:** Lynch, Hennessey, Wilkins, Liacos, Abrams, O'Connor
- **Cited by:** 30 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9711946

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- reversing summary judgment for defendant on grounds that jury could decide whether rape of patient was foreseeable from reports of previous sexual assaults on the job
- holding defendant-hospital not entitled to summary judgment on plaintiff-patient’s claim for negligent retention of physician

## Opinion text

O’Connor, J.
(dissenting). I do not agree with Justice Lynch that the hospital was entitled to summary judgment on the ground that there is no substantial question of material fact bearing on proximate causation. I do agree with him, however, that the hospital did not owe a duty to the plaintiff to exercise care for her safety in her home. Summary judgment for the hospital should be affirmed.
“There can be negligence only where there is a duty to be careful,” Theriault v. Pierce, 307 Mass. 532, 533 (1940); and whether there is a duty to be careful is a question of law. Monadnock Display Fireworks, Inc. v. Andover, 388 Mass. 153, 156 (1983). Scandura v. Trombly Motor Coach Serv., Inc., 370 Mass. 612, 618 (1976). See Schofield v. Merrill, 386 Mass. 244 (1982). In determining whether the law ought to provide that a duty of care is owed by one person to another, we look to existing social values and customs, and to appropriate social policy. Id. at 246-254 .1 agree with Justice Lynch that the imposition on a hospital of a duty of care to nonhospital patients off the hospital premises has no source in existing social values and customs and, particularly because of its likely adverse effect on the cost of hospital care, is unsound public policy. I am aware of no case in which such a duty has been imposed.
As the Supreme Court of Washington said in the case of Pedroza v. Bryant, 101 Wash. 2d 226, 236 (1984) (en banc), “ [t]he hospital holds itself out to the community as a competent provider of medical care. The hospital does not hold itself out as an inspector or insurer of the private office practices of its *870 staff members. The delineation of staff privileges by the hospital can only affect the procedures used by staff members while they are inside hospital walls. The public [including employees of the hospital] cannot reasonably expect anything more.” (Emphasis in original.)

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9711946. Public record. Not legal advice.