Saddleback Community Hospital v. Superior Court

Opinion

SONENSHINE, J.

Brett Harvey, by and through his guardian ad litem, Michael Harvey, and Michael Harvey filed an action against Saddleback

[208]

Community Hospital (Hospital), 2 doctors and 100 Doe defendants, seeking damages and medical expenses for mishandling of Brett’s fractured femur. The hospital was subsequently served with a request to produce “all original personnel files [of anyone performing medical or hospital service on Brett during his stay] . . . from the time of each such person’s contact with [the hospital] for employment, in any capacity to the present [except those involving compensation].” The Harveys’ motion to compel was denied by the court “without prejudice to plaintiff’s framing and serving a narrower request.”

A motion for reconsideration was accompanied by a detailed list of requested documents

1

relating to approximately 37 individuals. The court tentatively denied the motion, Hospital submitted and its counsel departed. Following subsequent ex parte argument by the Harveys’ counsel, the court ordered production of the files as specified. Hospital’s motions to reconsider (pursuant to Evid. Code, § 1157 and the constitutional right to privacy) and for a protective order were denied, We conclude the trial court erred in allowing blanket inspection of the requested files.

In

Matchett

v.

Superior Court

(1974) 40 Cal.App.3d 623 [115 Cal.Rptr. 317], the court recognized “[s]ection 1157 represents a legislative choice between competing public concerns. It embraces the goal of medical staff candor [in appraising their peers to improve the quality of in-hospital medical practice] at the cost of impairing plaintiffs’ access to evidence [revealing the competency of a hospital’s staff].”

(Id.,

at p. 629.)

The immunity contained in section 1157, however, protects proceedings and records of described staff committees, not “the files of the hospital