Supervisor Malpractice: Liability to the Supervisee in Clinical Supervision

✍ Scribed by CHARLES L. GUEST JR.; KATHERINE DOOLEY

• Publisher: American Counseling Association
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 706 KB
• Volume: 38
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0011-0035
• DOI: 10.1002/j.1556-6978.1999.tb00577.x

✦ Synopsis

Legal liability of supervisors to supervisees beyond the principles of respondeat superior or vicarious liability was explored. After defining 4 widely accepted elements of malpractice, it was determined that each of the 4 elements could be applied in the supervisory relationship.

Most of the literature involving malpractice charges against supervisors examined the principle of respondeat superior or vicarious liability to the client. Prosser, in Slovenko's (1980) seminal work on the legal issues involved in supervision, explained this concept :

By reason of certain relationships that may exist between parties, the negligence of one may be charged against the other, though the latter has played no part in it. has done nothing whatever to aid or encourage it, and, in fact has done all that he possibly can to prevent it. (p. 453) Slovenko described several settings in which the actions of a supervisor or supervisee were the direct and proximate cause of some sort of injury to a client. In addressing the case of Tarasofi u.