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Lester v. Hall11/23/1998
{1} Plaintiff Barbara Lester, a third party non-patient, alleges that Defendant physician E.B. Hall's negligent treatment of his patient, Merlin Andersen, caused Andersen to injure Lester in an automobile accident. The United States District Court for the District of New Mexico certified the case to this Court pursuant to Rule 12-607 NMRA 1998 (certification from federal courts) on the question of whether Hall owes a legal duty to Lester. This Court has previously held that a physician owes a duty to "persons injured by patients driving automobiles from a doctor's office when the patient has just been injected with drugs known to affect judgment and driving ability" in . Because we do not extend the duty articulated in Wilschinsky to prescription cases under this fact pattern, we answer the certified question in the negative.
Facts and Procedural Background
{2} The District Court certified the case to this Court on the following question of law:
Does a physician owe a legal duty to a non-patient who is injured in a collision with a motor vehicle, operated by the physician's patient, who was last treated by the physician five days before the collision, and whose ability to drive a vehicle allegedly was impaired by medications prescribed by the physician, who (1) allegedly improperly monitored his patient's medication and (2) allegedly failed to warn his patient that the medication could impair the patient's driving ability?
The District Court included a statement of facts relevant to this case:
[Hall] prescribed lithium, in addition to other medications, to his patient while treating him for a medical condition. Factual disputes exist as to whether [Hall] properly monitored his patient's lithium levels. Failure to do so allegedly could cause the patient to suffer toxicity with side effects that could impair one's driving ability. Factual disputes also exist as to whether [Hall] warned the patient concerning the side-effects of the lithium and the effects that lithium toxicity may have on the patient's ability to perform certain activities, including driving. Five days after [Hall] last treated him, the patient, allegedly in an impaired condition resulting from toxic levels of lithium in his system, drove a motor vehicle and caused an accident in which [Lester] was injured.
{3} The District Court noted that the facts in this case are outside the narrow factual scope of the duty we recognized in Wilschinsky and that the holding of that case should not be construed to create a general duty to the "entire public for any injuries suffered for which an argument of causation can be made." . We narrowly drew our holding in order to emphasize that courts should consider with great caution whether the facts of particular cases are appropriate for recognizing physicians' duties to third parties under the principles articulated in Wilschinsky. See id.; see also (noting that "the Court intended to limit Wilschinsky to its specific circumstance" and declining to "extend its rationale, as such, to the medical malpractice arena"). " e specifically decline to address the issue of whether under any facts, negligently prescribing drugs could give rise to third-party liability." . We conclude that, under the principles articulated in Wilschinsky and the public policy of New Mexico, Hall does not owe a duty to Lester on the facts of this case, and we therefore join a substantial number of jurisdictions declining to extend physicians' duties to non-patients for prescription-involved situations.
Wilschinsky v. Medina: Physicians' Duty to Third Persons in New Mexico
{4} "Whether a practicing physician in New Mexico owes a
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