Whenever an individual files a personal injury lawsuit against another person or entity, the defendant is entitled to access to the plaintiff\u2019s medical records through a process known as discovery. Conversely, the plaintiff is also entitled to pertinent information such as the defendant\u2019s insurance policy. <\/p>\n
Indeed, many of the key pieces of information that each side gathers about the other during litigation are revealed during the pretrial period of discovery. For this reason, there are rarely if ever any \u201cPerry Mason\u201d-like moments of revelatory surprise if and when a case goes to trial.<\/p>\n
But one plaintiff, Paul Bailey, of Philadelphia, would have preferred to maintain some mystery in his personal injury lawsuit that was filed in July 2014 in the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas. Bailey, who claimed to have fallen on a city sidewalk on November 22, 2012, and to have suffered numerous injuries on an allegedly \u201cbroken, defective or unlevel sidewalk,\u201d refused to comply with the defendants\u2019 request for his medical and psychiatric records.<\/p>\n
Bailey\u2019s lawsuit alleged that the defendants \u2014 Subway, Comcast, Verizon and the City of Philadelphia \u2014 were negligent for allegedly knowing about the condition of the sidewalk in question and taking no steps to repair it. During discovery, Comcast filed a slew of subpoenas to obtain information about Bailey\u2019s physical and mental health history and condition. But Bailey\u2019s response was that the request was \u201ctoo numerous and burdensome\u201d and that he did not have to provide the records because the request was in violation of doctor-patient confidentiality.<\/p>\n
However, the presiding judge in this case ruled on March 31 that the defense had a valid right to submit the subpoenas and records requests and ordered Bailey to comply. The plaintiff subsequently filed a motion for reconsideration of the judge\u2019s ruling.<\/p>\n
While there are some sources of information that are shielded from discovery, such as discussions between an attorney and client that are protected by attorney-client privilege, medical records that are relevant to a personal injury case are not among them. An experienced personal injury attorney will be able to carefully guide his or her client through the important discovery process.<\/p>\n
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Siempre que una persona interpone una demanda por da\u00f1os personales contra otra persona o entidad, el demandado tiene derecho a acceder al historial m\u00e9dico del demandante mediante un proceso conocido como \u00abdiscovery\u00bb. Por su parte, el demandante tambi\u00e9n tiene derecho a obtener informaci\u00f3n pertinente, como la p\u00f3liza de seguro del demandado. De hecho, muchos de los datos clave que cada\u2026<\/p>","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":862,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[173],"class_list":["post-872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-paul-bailey"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petrilloandgoldberg.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petrilloandgoldberg.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petrilloandgoldberg.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petrilloandgoldberg.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petrilloandgoldberg.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=872"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.petrilloandgoldberg.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/872\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":873,"href":"https:\/\/www.petrilloandgoldberg.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/872\/revisions\/873"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petrilloandgoldberg.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.petrilloandgoldberg.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petrilloandgoldberg.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.petrilloandgoldberg.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}