Court Opinion

ID: 9527812
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 03:34:32.835448+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:26:14.143357
License: Public Domain

OPALA, J.,
with whom KAUGER, Justice, joins, concurring.
Although I concur generally in today’s pronouncement, I write separately to add *154my own analytical basis for the construction to be placed on the provisions of 76 O.S.Supp.1985 § 19(B)1 that are the subject of contention in this proceeding for a prerogative writ.
The provisions of 76 O.S.Supp.1985 § 19(B) subject to testimonial compulsion “under existing rules of evidence” a health care provider’s “communications” with and “knowledge gained by examination” of every person for whose death or bodily injury a claim “arising from patient care” is brought against a practitioner of the healing arts or a licensed hospital. The cited section plainly mandates — for use in physician and hospital malpractice suits — a broader exemption from the statutory physician/patient evidentiary privilege than that which generally obtains under the waiver provisions of 12 O.S.1981 § 2503(D)(3)2 in personal injury or death actions. Evidentiary materials declared in § 19(B) to be compellable for adduction are neither explicitly nor implicitly freed from the law’s structured process for orderly pretrial discovery. Moreover, because the provisions of Art. 5, § 46, Okl. Const., operate to invalidate any “special” law regulating procedure in judicial inquiries, a different construction of § 19(B) from that placed on it by today’s opinion would likely put that section on a veritable collision course with the fundamental law’s plain interdiction of legislative acts that would make general rules of practice “before the courts” subject to some narrow exception applicable to discovery only in a select subclass of torts.3
I hence concur in the court’s refusal to single out medical and hospital malpractice suits for some special discovery rules that are not available in other death or personal injury litigation. The challenged “discovery” order condemned by today’s pronouncement is impermissibly overbroad because it compels unnamed health providers to make unbounded ex parte disclosures without any court supervision.

.The pertinent terms of 76 O.S.Supp.1985 § 19(B) provide:
"In cases involving a claim for personal injury or death against any practitioner of the healing arts or a licensed hospital, arising out of patient care, where any person has placed his physical or mental condition in issue by the commencement of any action, proceeding or suit for damages, or where any person has placed in issue the physical or mental condition of any other person or deceased person by or through whom such person rightfully claims, he shall be deemed to waive any privilege granted by law concerning any communication made to a physician or health care provider with reference to any physical or mental condition or any knowledge obtained by such physician or health care provider by personal examination of any such patient; provided that, before any such communication, medical or hospital record or testimony is admitted in evidence in any proceeding it must be material and relevant to an issue therein, according to existing rules of evidence." [Emphasis mine.]

. The terms of 12 O.S.1981' § 2503(D)(3) provide:
“The privilege under this Code as to a communication relevant to the physical, mental or emotional condition of the patient in any proceeding in which the patient relies upon that condition as an element of his claim or defense or, after the patient’s death, in any proceeding in which any party relies upon the condition as an element of his claim or defense, is qualified to the extent that an adverse party in said proceeding may obtain relevant information regarding said condition by statutory discovery.’’ [Emphasis mine.]

. The pertinent terms of Art. 5, § 46, Okl. Const., provide:
"The Legislature shall not, except as otherwise provided in this Constitution, pass any local or special law authorizing:
Regulating the practice or jurisdiction of, or changing the rules of evidence in judicial proceedings or inquiry before the courts....
[Emphasis mine.]