A landmark California court case, Tarasoff v. Regents of the University of California, dramatically affected the right to confidentiality between client and therapist. This case led to the conclusion that:

a therapist must break the obligation of confidentiality if there is a clear danger to a specific identifiable person.

Explanation:

As per the case of Tarasoff v. Regents of the University, the court decides that in case a patient of a therapist poses serious danger to a person, he incurs an obligation to take appropriate care to protect the intended victim from such threat. In this case, the therapist failed to protect the victim who was killed by his patient. He was even failed to convey the patient's intention to victim. Victim's parents sued the therapist and University staff for not exercising their duty to alert the victim of the patient's threat.