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Retired psychiatrist Myron Liptzin, M.D., will be getting his day in court—again. This time, however, he hopes that he will not be facing a $500,000 malpractice judgment.

A North Carolina court has agreed to hear an appeal of the 1998 case, in which a jury found Liptzin guilty of medical negligence and awarded a half million dollars to the plaintiff. What provoked so much controversy that the case gained the attention of national media was that the plaintiff was a former patient with schizophrenia who shot and killed two people at random eight months after his treatment with Liptzin ended.

Liptzin had been treating the patient, Wendell Williamson, at the University of North Carolina’s student health center in Chapel Hill. He was a law student being treated for repeated delusions that he was telepathic. Liptzin’s retirement, about which he informed Williamson, coincided with the patient’s running up against the six-visit limit the health center imposes and the end of a school year.

Liptzin gave the student a referral to a community mental health center in the rural hometown where Williamson was raised and thought he might spend the summer. He told Williamson that someone there would be able to renew his prescription for thiothixene (Navane), which had successfully controlled Williamson’s symptoms. Liptzin recommended that he return to the health center for additional treatment the following year if he returned to school. The psychiatrist gave Williamson a 30-day supply of his medication to bridge the gap until he could obtain a new prescription.

Eight months after his last session with Liptzin, Williamson killed two people on a Chapel Hill street after hearing voices instructing him to do so. He was later found not guilty by reason of insanity and committed to a state psychiatric hospital.

He decided to sue the psychiatrist, claiming that Liptzin should have made him understand that he might become dangerous if he stopped taking his antipsychotic and should have taken more concrete steps to arrange a specific referral.

A jury agreed with the plaintiff. Though North Carolina law allows parceling out of responsibility in determining the amount of a monetary judgment, jurors did not assess any blame against Williamson for failure to take his medication or to seek additional psychiatric care before the murders.

In agreeing to take the appeal—hearings are scheduled for the middle of this month—the Court of Appeals of North Carolina accepted an amicus curiae brief filed by the North Carolina Psychiatric Association (NCPA) that calls on the court to reverse the jury’s finding.

In addition to contesting the jury’s failure to assess some liability against Williamson for his actions, the NCPA brief explains that if the judgment is allowed to stand, patient care in the state will suffer as psychiatrists dread the consequences of taking on patients with severe psychoses. Psychiatrists would from that point on be more selective in the patients they agree to treat, the NCPA emphasizes, out of fear that they will be held responsible for patients’ acts at some point in the future and for continuously monitoring patients’ treatment compliance.

The appeal was filed by the University of North Carolina, which employed Liptzin during Williamson’s treatment.