Defendant's Ability to Obtain Plaintiff's Complete Medical History -

California

What limitations exist, if any, on a defendant’s ability to obtain a plaintiff’s complete medical history, both pre and post incident?

Plaintiffs have a statutory physician-patient privilege over their medical records (Cal. Evid. Code §§ 990 & 1014), and they also have an “inalienable right of privacy” provided by the California Constitution. Cal. Const. Art. 1 § 1. Despite these protections, a patient waives confidentiality when filing a civil suit. Cal. Civ. Code §56.07. Such a waiver only extends “to information relating to the medical conditions in question, and [it] does not automatically open all of a plaintiff’s past medical history to scrutiny.” Britt v. Superior Court, 20 Cal. 3d 844, 849 (1978).

Defendants in personal injury lawsuits are generally restricted from accessing plaintiffs’ medical records more than 10 years prior to the incident without good cause or from discovering records that are unrelated or irrelevant to the specified injuries of the dispute. Even if part of a medical condition is at issue, it does not follow that the plaintiff waived the privilege as to otherwise protected aspects of their medical history during their lifetime, or some condition that they may have suffered from at the time of the incident which is clearly unrelated to the incident. Hale v. Superior Court, 28 Cal. App. 4th 1421, 1424 (1994). No statutory basis was apparent.

 

** The authors would like to thank Austin Smith and Shawn McKendry for their help in researching and compiling this compendium.