George McKray

1926 - 2016

George Alexander McKray

February 28, 1926 - November 18, 2016

George Alexander McKray passed away peacefully at his home in Alameda, CA, on November 18, 2016. His beloved wife, Joanne, followed him and passed away on December 7, 2016. He is survived by his son James McKray of Kings Beach, CA, daughters Shandis McKray Pilat of Auburn CA and Linda Nelson of Las Vegas, NV, and his cousin Boris Fedushin of Paris, France and New York City, NY.

George was born in San Francisco on February 28, 1926 to Alexander and Anna Makaroff, who had moved to the United States following the Russian Revolution (1918-1922) from Harbin, China. His parents later changed their name to McKray in order to make it sound "more american". George spent several of his childhood years at Sunny Hills Farm in San Anselmo, CA, a former orphanage, while his parents struggled to learn English and provide for the family. His experience at Sunny Hills left him with positive memories of caring adults and good friends.

When they obtained a more stable footing, George was able to rejoin his parents in San Francisco. There he attended Marina Junior High School and then Galileo High School. After graduating early in order to get a start at University of California at Berkeley before entering the military service, he enlisted in the Navy in 1943 and was able to continue his college education at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

In 1946 he was sent to Guam as a supply officer where he served until being released from the service. He returned to U.C. Berkeley to complete his BS and then a MS in Food Science and later returned for a masters degree in Public Health Administration. Meanwhile, he worked as a food and drug inspector and later administrator at the California Department of Public Health.

George decided what he really wanted to do was to become a lawyer and began law school at night at USF in San Francisco. After passing the bar exam he was offered a position at the National Institute of Health and moved east in 1960, first to Washington, DC to work for NIH for a year and then to New York City to study on a food and drug law fellowship at New York University. There he obtained an LLM in Trade Regulations and met Joanne Helwig who was living in Greenwich Village around the corner from NYU. The two were married prior to moving back to the Bay Area in 1962. George opened his San Francisco law office, and for the next two decades taught health law part time at the UC School of Public Health.

As a lawyer, his best known case was Tarasoff v. Regents of the University of California. A young female student had been murdered by a disturbed young doctoral student from India after she rejected his advances. The young man had been seeing a psychologist at UC clinic at the time, and had talked about his desire to kill her. The psychologist learned from a friend of the young man that his patient was planing to buy a gun, and wrote a letter to the campus police about the situation. His superior learned of the matter and told the police to return the letter, and for the psychologist to destroy all copies of it.

Following the murder the parents of the young woman sued the University on the grounds that their employee had failed to warn their daughter of imminent danger. In 1974 the California Supreme Court ruled that the psychologist had a duty to warn her. Regarding doctor-patient confidentiality the Court proclaimed "The protective privilege ends where the public peril begins".

The Tarasoff case has been cited in hundreds of cases since, and statutes reflecting its ruling have been passed in a number of states. Two requirements are necessary to create a duty to warn: a serious threat of harm to a know victim or victims, and a special relationship between the one who makes the threat and the person who learns of it. Application of the Tarasoff ruling continues to be expanded well beyond duties of mental health professionals. For example a physician is obligated to warn his genital herpes patient about the risk of transmitting his disease. The patient then has a legal duty to disclose his past history of genital herpes infection to a prospective partner. Tarasoff motivated the enactment of a California statute modifying the 400 year old hallmark of Anglo-American jurisprudence, the attorney-client privilege of confidentiality. Since its enactment, if a criminal attorney's client threatens to kill a witness, the attorney is given the option of taking steps to protect the witness from harm.

Being a sole practitioner, George took advantage of his flexible schedule to do extensive traveling with Joanne. Through the years they have visited most of Europe and much of Asia and the Middle East. They have felt privileged to come home to the Bay Area, with its world class cultural offerings and mild climate.

A private memorial gathering will be announced and held at a later date. Anyone wishing to make a memorial gift may do so to a charity of choice.