Tort Law—No Duty for Physician To Warn Guards of Inmate’s Communicable Disease—Seebold v. Prison Health Services, Inc., 57 A.3d 1232 (Pa. 2012)

One of the critical elements of any action in negligence is the existence of a duty that one party owes to another. Generally a defendant has no duty to protect someone who is at risk due to occurrences that the defendant had no part in generating, but there are exceptions to this rule where courts have imposed such a duty. In Seebold v. Prison Health Services, Inc., the court considered whether to create an additional exception to the general rule and impose a common-law duty on a physician who treats prisoners to warn guards that a particular inmate has a communicable disease. The court held that physicians do not have such a duty to warn at common law.