## Facts

- Dr. Renu K. Thapar, a psychiatrist, treated Freddy Ray Lilly beginning in 1985 for mental-health disorders including paranoid and delusional beliefs involving his stepfather, Henry Zezulka.
- Over roughly three years, Lilly received psychotherapy and medication, primarily as an outpatient, with multiple hospital admissions for urgent needs.
- In August 1988, Lilly voluntarily entered inpatient care; Thapar’s notes recorded that Lilly “feels like killing” his stepfather but stated he had decided not to do it.
- After seven days of inpatient treatment, Thapar discharged Lilly.
- Within about a month after discharge, Lilly shot and killed Henry Zezulka.
- Thapar did not warn the Zezulka family or notify law enforcement of Lilly’s threat, and did not notify them of Lilly’s discharge.
- Lyndall Zezulka (Henry’s widow) sued, alleging negligent diagnosis and treatment and negligent failure to warn caused Henry’s wrongful death.

## Issues

1. Whether Texas law recognizes negligence liability against a mental-health professional for failing to warn appropriate third parties when a patient makes specific threats against a readily identifiable person.

## Decision

- The Texas Supreme Court reversed the court of appeals and rendered judgment that Zezulka take nothing.
- The Court held Texas does not impose a common-law duty on mental-health professionals to warn third parties of patient threats.
- The Court relied on the Legislature’s confidentiality and disclosure scheme, which permits limited disclosures (including to law enforcement) but does not require warnings.
- The Court declined to create a judicial duty that would conflict with legislative policy choices and increase liability exposure without statutory protections.

## Legal Principles

- Texas’s mental-health confidentiality statute makes patient communications confidential and permits disclosure only in limited circumstances.
- Statutory permission to disclose threats to law enforcement is discretionary; it does not create an affirmative duty to warn.
- When the Legislature has enacted a detailed policy scheme in a field, courts should be cautious about recognizing new common-law duties that conflict with that scheme.
- Absent legislative immunity or similar protections, imposing a mandatory duty to warn could expose professionals to liability both for disclosure (to patients) and nondisclosure (to third parties).

## Conclusion

The Texas Supreme Court held that, given the state’s statutory approach to mental-health confidentiality and limited discretionary disclosures, Texas common law does not require mental-health professionals to warn identifiable third parties of patient threats, and it rejected negligence liability based on a failure-to-warn theory.


Thapar v. Zezulka, 994 S.W.2d 635 (Tex. 1999)