Court Opinion

ID: 9773820
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 18:00:20.456621+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:58.288145
License: Public Domain

ROBERTSON, Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent and would quash the preliminary writ in prohibition previously issued.
A review of our recent jurisprudence addressing matters relating to medical authorizations is sufficient evidence to reveal that this Court has done little to improve matters since State ex rel McNutt v. Keet, 432 S.W.2d 597, 601 (Mo. banc 1968). The majority says that the recently announced rule in State ex rel. Stecher v. Dowd, 912 S.W.2d 462, 464 (Mo. banc 1995) — that “only those medical records that relate to the physical conditions at issue under the pleadings” are discoverable by a defendant — is “clear and in almost all cases should allow little room for controversy.” But the addition of time and provider limitations to the otherwise clear statement of the rule announced in Keet breeds uncertainty and provides an excuse for the protracted litigation over discovery that the majority counsels against. Thus, the majority’s statement is more hopeful than factual, more self-congratulatory than helpful.
Pleadings in cases involving personal injury generally lay claim to devastation beginning at the ends of the hair coursing through every organ and musculo-skeletal system that connect the hair to the soles of the feet. Fact pleading requires such a listing in order to ensure the plaintiff that all injuries actually caused by the defendant’s negligence are legally before the fact finder at trial.
Here, the plaintiffs pleadings are quite restrained. They claim injury only to the *810plaintiffs arms, left wrist and hand, back, head, and chest and assert further that plaintiff suffered “severe pain of body and mind.”
The defendants’ authorization form is also quite restrained. I read the defendants’ proposed form to be more limiting than does the majority, relating only to plaintiffs “head, arms, hands, upper body, [and] entire back ... or any injuries or conditions concerning [plaintiffs] emotional or mental state.” These are the parts of the body plaintiff put at issue by filing her legal action. By filing that legal action, plaintiff waived her patient/physician privilege under Keet.
To this point the majority and I do not disagree. The authorization proposed by the defendants properly limits itself to the injuries claimed by the plaintiff.
But unlike the majority, I believe the waiver of the patient/physician privilege to which the plaintiff agreed by filing suit is complete as to the injuries claimed in the petition. I do not agree that the time and provider limitations to which Stecher refers are consistent with a discovery process designed to ferret out previous injuries or complaints of injuries to the body parts or systems that plaintiff claims a defendant’s negligence caused. The opposite is true. And this is particularly so where the defendant seeks to learn whether a plaintiff suffered or claimed an injury of sufficient magnitude to require medical treatment of those same body parts or systems prior to the event that led the plaintiff to file suit against these defendants. Such information is highly relevant to the defendant’s case — if not on the issue of negligence then certainly on the question of the extent of the defendant’s contribution to the plaintiffs averred damages. That a fifty-year-old plaintiff had neo-natal surgery for a congenital defect of the spine, or fell from a bicycle on her tenth birthday and broke her arm, or had a tattoo removed from her upper chest by a dermatologist, or frequently visited a chiropractor for treatment of an aching back for a decade that ended ten years before the accident at issue occurred, or consulted with a psychiatrist for constant pain at some point in her past are all highly relevant facts that a defendant is entitled to discover when a plaintiff puts arm and back injuries or chest-scarring or severe pain of the mind at issue in a lawsuit.
The rule I prefer is admittedly harsh. But it has limits. Its limits are those that plaintiff places on the defendant by the pleadings filed. I would hold that the waiver of the patient/physician privilege is complete as to the parts and systems of the body for which injury is claimed. I would no longer recognize any limitations as to time or provider as to those injuries the plaintiff puts at issue.
Of course, I join in the majority’s hope that adversary counsel might to be able to work out disputes over the scope of discovery. And while I suspect that such agreements are fairly commonplace, we do not see them here. We see the cases in which positions have hardened, where compromise is no longer attempted and when the courts must dry the spittle from the legal papers before restoring order. In those cases, we have done little to bring peace with our attempts to fashion rules. Indeed, I fear that our efforts to date have only encouraged and provided an excuse for those who are inclined to fight about everything, to join the battle over discovery.
I concur in the remainder of the majority opinion but, for the reasons expressed, would quash the writ.