"Liability for medical malpractice depends, first, on the existence of a duty to the patient, which, in turn depends on the existence of a physician-patient relationship cere-ating the duty." (quotations and citation omitted)
How later courts described this case
- "Liability for medical malpractice depends, first, on the existence of a duty to the patient, which, in turn depends on the existence of a physician-patient relationship cere-ating the duty." (quotations and citation omitted)
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
I dissent.
I adopt the unanimous opinion of the Court of Civil Appeals as my dissent. See McCord-Baugh v. Birmingham Bd. of Educ. , 894 So.2d 672 (Ala.Civ.App. 2002). I share the concern of Justice Breyer in his opinion concurring in the result in Village of Willowbrook v. Olech , 528 U.S. 562 , 565 , 120 S.Ct. 1073 , 145 L.Ed.2d 1060 (2000), that the Court not "transform many ordinary violations of city or state law into violations of the Constitution. It might be thought that a rule that looks only to an intentional difference in treatment and a lack of a rational basis for that different treatment would work such a transformation." In my opinion, Justice Breyer's concern has come to fruition in the majority opinion in this case.
I do not understand Williams v. Pryor , 240 F.3d 944 , 951 (11th Cir. 2001), the only Eleventh Circuit case cited in the majority opinion, as adopting a "class of one" analysis in equal-protection challenges other than in land-use cases. *Page 692