Court Opinion

ID: 9450305
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 16:41:25.249913+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:14.563225
License: Public Domain

WRIGHT, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
This case is a graphic illustration of the mischief that results when the Interlocutory Appeals Act is misused. Here plaintiff’s suit for the death of his wife has been stayed in the District Court for months while this court attempts to determine whether a ruling on a garden variety discovery motion is erroneous. And as shown by this court’s order herein, the end is not yet in sight.
Mrs. LoBianco died when a toxic substance was injected into her spinal fluid in connection with the administration of a myelogram1 by the defendant doctors. Dr. Coe, the senior partner of the radiology firm in whose facilities the injection was administered, began an investigation of the incident immediately after the injection and sent the report of his investigation to his insurer. Excerpts from that report were made available orally to plaintiff’s counsel, but the balance of the report, and the written report itself, have been suppressed by the defendants on various grounds, including allegations that the report is the work product of a lawyer, that it is privileged, that no good cause for production is shown, and that the information contained therein is available otherwise. The District Court ordered production of the report, but certified its ruling to this court and stayed further action in the case pending review.
It is clear from the papers that this report of an investigation made contemporaneously with the incident in suit contains the most reliable information as to why Mrs. LoBianco died and who is responsible for her death. Depositions have been taken from all of the doctors involved, and these depositions are replete with refusals on the part of the witnesses to answer — sometimes on advice of counsel, inability of the witnesses to remember the details of the incident, and flat contradictions between the doctors participating in the incident as to what happened and what was said at the time. There can be no question, therefore, that good cause, as contemplated by Rule 34, F.R.Civ.P., for the production of the report is shown.2
The suggestion that the report in some way is the work product of a lawyer is difficult to understand. Admittedly the report was made by a doctor, completely unsupervised and unassisted by anyone. *974Nor was the report even made to a lawyer. The report was made to the insurer of the doctor’s medical firm, in the usual course of business, as required by his insurance policy. Counsel for the defendants insists that, though the report was made to the insurer, it is a privileged communication between counsel and client. This suggestion seems predicated on the idea that, since under the policy the insurer must furnish a defense for the assured, the insurance company here was merely an agent for transmittal of papers between the defendants and the insurance company’s lawyers. How this report from insured to insurer can thus be converted into a privileged communication between attorney and client somehow eludes me. See Gottlieb v. Bresler, D.D.C., 24 F.R.D. 371 (1959). Even if it can be said that the insurer’s lawyer under the policy became the lawyer for the assured, the report would still not be privileged because of its disclosure to a third person — in this case the insurance company. Certainly a court should not strain the concept of privilege where, as here, so doing may prevent this husband from proving who is responsible for the death of his wife.
Interlocutory appeal is permissible only where the issue raised presents a “controlling question of law” and such appeal will “advance the ultimate termination of the litigation.” 28 U.S.C. § 1292(b). No controlling question of law is presented by this review of the District Court’s ruling on a discovery motion. To permit review here is to “open the floodgates to a vast number of appeals from interlocutory orders in ordinary litigation.” Milbert v. Bison Laboratories, 3 Cir., 260 F.2d 431, 433 (1958). And rather than advance the ultimate termination of this litigation, the dilatory tactics demonstrated by this record, including this interlocutory appeal, have already been the cause of significant delay.
When the Interlocutory Appeals Act was under consideration, the Judicial Conference of the United States, sponsor of the legislation, assured the Congress that appeals under the statute would “only be used in exceptional cases where an intermediate appeal may avoid protracted and expensive litigation, and [would not] be used or granted in ordinary litigation wherein the issues raised can otherwise be properly disposed of.” H.R.Rep. No. 1667, 85th Cong., 2d Sess., p. 2. I respectfully suggest that the action taken by the District Court and this court in connection with the District Court’s ruling on a simple discovery motion is not in accordance with this representation.
I would dismiss the appeal as improvidently granted.

. A myelogram consists of the injection of an opaque dye into the spinal fluid to visualize by fluoroscopy the source of back pain. The patient here, who was suffering merely from backache, died within six hours of the injection.

. In attempting to prove which of the defendant doctors are responsible for his wife’s death, the plaintiff must rely on the testimony of the less than cooperative doctors themselves. In such circumstances, “ * * * where the plaintiff was rendered unconscious and unable to obtain on-the-spot information, which the defendant was equipped and able immediately to gather, the rules should be liberally construed so as to ascertain the truth and make facts available in advance of the trial to either party, upon a showing of due diligence.” Newell v. Capital Transit Co., D.D.C., 7 F.R.D. 732, 734 (1948).