Med Mal News

The New York court system's Appellate Division has upheld the revocation of a psychiatrist's license, based on findings by the state's Board for Professional Medical Conduct that the doctor had not only provided substandard care in several instances, but had carried on sexual relationships with two of his patients. The doctor, Rochester physician Carmen A. D'Angelo, argued in his appeal that the state regulators' actions against him violated his constitutional rights to court and marry the person of his choice (he later became engaged to one of the patients with whom he had had a sexual relationship). He also asked the court to abandon its own holding in Matter of Miller v. Commissioner of Health for State of N.Y., 270 AD2d 584 (2000), which said that the state's legislature did not mean to grant its approval of physician/patient sexual relationships simply because it had failed to specifically discuss such liaisons in its legislation addressing a physician's lack of moral fitness to practice medicine (Education Law ' 6530(20)). Psychiatrists, on the other hand, are explicitly barred from having sexual contact with patients under Education Law ' 6530(44). “Petitioner urges this Court to overrule this precedent, asserting that his constitutionally guaranteed liberty interest which protects his right to marriage encompasses a right to activities related to marriage and courtship, including ' astoundingly ' the right to engage in extramarital sexual relationships with his patients,” Justice Edward O. Spain wrote for the five-member court in Matter of D'Angelo v. State Board for Professional Medical Conduct. “We are unpersuaded that our interpretation of the Legislature's intent, undisturbed now for over nine years, was in error,” the court concluded.