Court Opinion

ID: 9845029
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 03:14:00.183338+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:15:50.538244
License: Public Domain

McQUADE, Justice
(concurring specially).
Waiver of the statutory impediment which precludes a physician from testifying without consent of his patient has been the subject of considerable discussion among the courts. Additional confusion has been raised concerning the admissibility of the physician’s testimony after death of the patient.
This Court, in Sprouse v. Magee, 46 Idaho 622, 269 P. 993, inferentially adopted the rule that the privilege under our statute continued after death of the patient, and could be waived by heirs of the deceased.
The privileged communication between physician and patient was not known at the common law, and is purely a creature of statute. 97 C.J.S. Witnesses § 293, p. 823; 8 Wigmore on Evidence, McNaughton Revision, sec. 2380, p. 818.
This being a statutory exclusion, we must refer to the Idaho statute to determine the extent of the privilege. I.C. § 9-203(4). Argument in support of the privilege was to encourage confidence in the patient that any disclosure of the patient’s problems would be treated confidentially, and to encourage many persons to accept medical aid who would otherwise refrain from receiving treatment. Nearly all of the considerations advanced in support of the privilege relate to the establishment of confidence of the patient during his lifetime that disclosure would not be made of personal information divulged for the sole purpose of receiving medical aid. Some courts, including Idaho, have permitted an exception to what is considered the majority rule by permitting heirs or others to waive the privilegie in the patient’s stead. 8 Wigmore on Evidence, McNaughton Revision, sec. 2380a, generally criticizes survival of the privilege after the patient’s death.
Having in mind that no privilege existed at common law and the privilege is personal to the patient, we should then look to the statute to see if it expressly continues the privilege after demise of the *577patient. The statute contemplates waiver by the patient himself, and upon death of the patient such permission becomes impossible. The statute thereupon becomes inoperative, and no longer binds the physician or surgeon to the privilege.
It does not appear that our legislators contemplated a continuation of the privilege subsequent to death. Cases concerning testators’ mental capabilities, such as herein, are frequent, and elongation of the privilege provides opportunities to evade disclosure of pertinent facts in appropriate contests. This statute should not be extended by the Court to prohibit pertinent disclosure after a patient’s death of information gained by a physician or surgeon during the decedent’s lifetime.
8 Wigmore on Evidence, McNaughton Revision, sec. 2380a, p. 831, states:
“It is certain that the practical employment of the privilege has come to mean little but the suppression of useful truth — truth which ought to be disclosed and would never be suppressed for the sake of any inherent repugnancy in the medical facts involved. Ninety-nine per cent of the litigation in which the privilege is invoked consists of three classes of cases — actions on policies of life insurance where the deceased’s misrepresentations of his health are involved, actions for corporal injuries where the extent of the plaintiff’s injury is at issue, and testamentary actions where the testator’s mental capacity is disputed. In all of these the medical testimony is absolutely needed for the purpose of learning the truth. In none of them is there any reason for the party to conceal the facts, except as a tactical maneuver in litigation. In the first two of these, the advancement of fraudulent claims is notoriously common; nor do the culpable methods of some insurers or carriers, whatever they may have been or still are, justify the infliction of retaliatory penalties, indirectly and indiscriminately, by means of an unsound rule for the suppression of truth. In none of these cases need there be any fear that the absence of the privilege will subjectively hinder people from consulting physicians freely. The actually injured person would still seek medical aid, the honest insured would still submit to medical examination, and the testator would still summon physicians to his cure.”
TAYLOR, C. J., concurs in this special concurrence.