Opinion ID: 1414591
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: (5) The trial court also erred in requiring plaintiffs to make unlimited disclosure of their lifetime medical histories.

Text: As noted at the outset, in addition to attacking the compelled disclosure of their private associational activities, plaintiffs also challenge a portion of the trial court's discovery order which compels them to disclose to defendant their entire lifetime medical histories. (See fn. 1, ante. ) Plaintiffs stress, in this regard, that while they are completely willing to provide defendant with medical information which relates in any way to the physical or emotional injuries for which they seek recovery in the underlying action  and, indeed, that they have already done so [6]  they object to the trial court's unlimited order which requires them to comply with defendant's request for information related to all past medical conditions, without regard to whether such conditions have any bearing on the present litigation. The port district argues, in response, that the broad discovery order properly affords it the opportunity to determine for itself whether the injuries, which plaintiffs assert were caused by airport operations, actually arose from other medical conditions. To assess the validity of plaintiffs' present claim, we turn first to the relevant statutory provisions. Under sections 990 et seq. and 1010 et seq. of the Evidence Code, a patient enjoys a privilege to refuse to disclose any confidential communication between himself and a treating physician or psychotherapist, and sections 992 and 1012 make clear that these privileges extend to at least a significant portion of the medical histories sought to be discovered by defendant. [7] Sections 996 and 1016, however, establish an important exception to the general physician-patient and psychotherapist-patient privileges, the patient-litigant exception, providing in relevant part that [t]here is no privilege ... as to a communication relevant to an issue concerning the condition of the patient if such issue has been tendered by ... [t]he patient. [8] The resolution of the instant case turns on the proper interpretation of the scope of these statutory exceptions. As we have already briefly indicated, our court addressed this identical question in In re Lifschutz, supra, 2 Cal.3d 415. The defendant in Lifschutz, like the defendant in the present case, asserted that under the patient-litigant exception as construed in earlier cases, a patient, by instituting a claim for physical or mental injury, automatically waived his statutory privilege as to all protected communications. In Lifschutz, however, we emphatically rejected such a broad rendition of the statutory exception. Noting that such an expansive construction might effectively deter many ... patients from instituting [legitimate lawsuits] out of fear of opening up all past communications to discovery, we concluded that such a result would clearly be an intolerable and overbroad intrusion into the patient's privacy, not sufficiently limited to the legitimate state interest embodied in the provision, and would create opportunities for harassment and blackmail. (2 Cal.3d at p. 435.) Accordingly, we held in Lifschutz that the `automatic' waiver of privilege contemplated by [the patient-litigant exception] must be construed not as a complete waiver of the privilege but only as a limited waiver concomitant with the purposes of the exception. Under section 1016 disclosure can be compelled only with respect to those mental conditions the patient-litigant has `disclose[d] ... by bringing an action in which they are in issue' [citation]; communications which are not directly relevant to those specific conditions do not fall within the terms of section 1016's exception and therefore remain privileged. Disclosure cannot be compelled with respect to other aspects of the patient-litigant's personality even though they may, in some sense, be `relevant' to the substantive issues of litigation. The patient thus is not obligated to sacrifice all privacy to seek redress for a specific mental or emotional injury; the scope of the inquiry permitted depends upon the nature of the injuries which the patient-litigant himself has brought before the court.  (Final italics added; remaining italics in original.) (2 Cal.3d at p. 435.) In Roberts v. Superior Court (1973) 9 Cal.3d 330, 337-339 [107 Cal. Rptr. 309, 508 P.2d 309], our court explicitly reaffirmed Lifschutz 's narrow interpretation of the scope of the patient-litigant exception. Our holdings in Lifschutz and Roberts support plaintiffs' contention that the discovery order in the instant case is impermissibly overbroad. As Lifschutz explains, plaintiffs are not obligated to sacrifice all privacy to seek redress for a specific [physical,] mental or emotional injury; while they may not withhold information which relates to any physical or mental condition which they have put in issue by bringing this lawsuit, [9] they are entitled to retain the confidentiality of all unrelated medical or psychotherapeutic treatment they may have undergone in the past. The trial court thus obviously erred in ordering plaintiffs to disclose to defendant their entire lifetime medical histories and this aspect of the challenged discovery order must also be vacated.