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11 to report this threat to Ms Tarasoff directly. However, the psychologist did tell his supervising psychiatrist, who reported the matter to the campus police, who interviewed Mr Poddar, but let him go. After the murder, the girl’s parents sued the psychologist (or, rather, his employer) for “failure to warn”, in that no warning was conveyed to their daughter. The trial Court held that no such duty to warn existed, but, on appeal, the Californian Supreme Court disagreed and found for the parents of the dead girl. The appeal judgment cited a 1920 precedent from New England. A doctor had seen a young man who appeared to have syphilis. At that time, syphilis was not considered a venereal disease, but generally contagious with simple contact. Thus, the doctor advised the man to leave the boarding house. He did not. The doctor warned the landlady of the boarding house about the patient’s syphilis. She ejected him from the boarding house, whereupon he sued the doctor in the Supreme Court of New England, alleging breach of the doctor’s common law duty of confidentiality to him. The Court found for the doctor, saying he had a professional obligation to protect the public. The Court said, succinctly, “[T]he private privilege ends where the public peril begins.” This is a very similar sentiment to that expressed by Lord Denning in 1969, on the other side of the Atlantic (see earlier).