Opinion ID: 2370577
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Testimonial Privilege

Text: The respondent correctly recognizes that the therapist-client privilege is animated by broad and varied public policy. We have observed that such public policy may be even more compelling than that behind the usual physician-patient privilege given the need for complete trust to facilitate communication and treatment. In the Matter of Berg & Berg, 152 N.H. 658, 664, 886 A.2d 980 (2005). The therapist-client privilege, like most testimonial privileges, is not absolute and we have recognized that certain privileges must yield when the disclosure of information is essential. State v. Elwell, 132 N.H. 599, 605, 567 A.2d 1002 (1989), superseded in part on other grounds by RSA 329:26 (Supp.2008). Our jurisprudence generally classifies the legislative abrogation of an evidentiary privilege as constitutionally permissible, see Rich v. Flanders, 39 N.H. 304, 323 (1859), overruled in part on other grounds by Caswell v. Maplewood Garage, 84 N.H. 241, 149 A. 746 (1930); Little v. Gibson, 39 N.H. 505 (1859), given that witness privileges exist as rules of evidence, see N.H. R. Ev. 501. [N]o one can have a vested right in the testimony of any particular witness.... Rich, 39 N.H. at 336. In Little we said: [An act] mak[ing] the parties to pending suits, not excepted from its operation, competent witnesses on the trial thereof,... is not unconstitutional as being retrospective... inasmuch as it establishes no new rule for the decision of those causes, and violates no vested rights of the parties thereto, but is a mere regulation of the proceeding for enforcing remedies, by prescribing a rule for the admission of existing evidence thereinan exercise of the acknowledged powers of every government. Little, 39 N.H. at 509. Thus, we affirm our prior holdings and conclude that the statutory and other similar evidentiary privileges abrogated by RSA 135-E: 10, I, are creatures of public policy and subject to retrospective alteration or elimination by the legislature. See Goldman, 151 N.H. at 773-74, 868 A.2d 278.