## Facts

- Bruce Tindal, who had a history of serious mental illness and treatment, lived with Senie Dunkle Eyer.
- Tindal received psychiatric and counseling services connected with Pennsylvania State University, including medication management and ongoing counseling.
- Tindal strangled Eyer to death in a restroom at a store operated by Food Service East, Inc.
- The record did not show that Tindal communicated to his treatment providers a specific intent to harm Eyer or identified her as a target before the killing.

## Issues

1. Whether mental-health professionals and an affiliated university owed a legal duty to warn or otherwise protect a third party from a patient’s violent act when the patient had not communicated a specific threat against that person.
2. Whether summary judgment was proper where the record lacked evidence creating a genuine dispute that the providers knew of a specific, identifiable victim at risk.

## Decision

- The Superior Court of Pennsylvania affirmed the trial court’s orders granting summary judgment to the additional defendants (the university and mental-health professionals).
- The court held that, on this record, the additional defendants owed no legal duty to Eyer to warn or protect her from Tindal’s violence.
- The court concluded there was no genuine issue of material fact and the additional defendants were entitled to judgment as a matter of law.

## Legal Principles

- Summary judgment is appropriate when the record shows no genuine issue of material fact and the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.
- A duty to warn or protect third parties from a patient’s violence requires, at minimum, facts showing the provider knew (or should have known) of a specific threat toward a reasonably identifiable victim.
- General awareness of a patient’s mental illness or potential for hostility, without a communicated, targeted threat, is insufficient to establish foreseeability necessary to impose a duty to a third party.
- A physician’s duty to third parties recognized in contexts involving specific advice and foreseeable reliance does not extend to psychotherapist liability absent comparable direct communications or reliance by the injured third party.

## Conclusion

The court declined to impose third-party liability on mental-health providers and an affiliated university for a patient’s homicide of his cohabitant where the providers had not received a specific, communicated threat identifying the victim; without evidence supporting a duty element, summary judgment was affirmed.


Dunkle v. Food Serv. E., Inc., 400 Pa. Super. 58, 582 A.2d 1342 (Pa. Super. Ct. 1990)