Court Opinion

ID: 9703623
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 00:02:22.639734+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:50.629668
License: Public Domain

*107ROWLEY, President Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent on the basis that the order at issue is immediately appealable under the collateral order exception to the final judgment rule. The collateral order exception was set forth by the United States Supreme Court in Cohen v. Beneficial Industrial Loan Corp., 337 U.S. 541, 69 S.Ct. 1221, 93 L.Ed. 1528 (1949), and by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in Pugar v. Greco, 483 Pa. 68, 394 A.2d 542 (1978). Under Cohen and Pugar,
an order is considered final and appealable if (1) it is separable from and collateral to the main cause of action; (2) the right involved is too important to be denied review; and (3) the question presented is such that if review is postponed until final judgment in the case, the claimed right will be irreparably lost.
Pugar, 483 Pa. at 73, 394 A.2d at 545.
In the present case, appellants contend that the order permitting appellee to conduct ex parte interviews with appellant-wife’s physician and to call that physician as an expert witness at trial violates the physician-patient privilege. A similar issue was recently considered by a panel of this Court in Commonwealth v. Miller, 406 Pa.Super. 206, 593 A.2d 1308 (1991). In Miller, the trial court entered an order directing appellant, Community Resources of Fayette County, Inc. d/b/a the Women’s Resource Center of Fayette County (WRC), to provide to the court, for an in camera hearing, all records and information it possessed pertaining to the alleged victim of the *108sexual assault for which the defendant, Miller, was being prosecuted. WRC filed an appeal from this order, arguing that the records concerning the alleged victim were confidential. This Court concluded that, under the collateral order doctrine, the order was immediately appealable.
In reaching this conclusion, the Court first determined that the order involving WRC’s files was collateral to the underlying criminal action. In addition, the Court determined that the right involved, namely the alleged victim’s right to privacy and confidentiality in her relationship with WRC, was too important to be denied review. Finally, the Court concluded that “the claimed right of confidentiality and privacy will be lost irreparably since once the information is divulged, the privilege is lost.” Id., 406 Pa.Super. at 210, 593 A.2d at 1310. Because I find the issue in the present case concerning the confidential nature of the physician-patient privilege to be indistinguishable from the issue in Miller concerning the confidential nature of rape crisis center records, I would address the merits of the arguments appellants raise in this appeal.