Lowy v. PeaceHealth
Annotate this CaseThe issue before the Supreme Court concerned whether, in civil litigation, a party could decline to produce requested discoverable information on the basis that to locate the information would require consulting privileged documents. Petitioners Peacehealth and St. Joseph Hospital sought a protective order to prevent them from being required to review its quality assurance records to identify discoverable medical records in a medical negligence suit. The Court's policy favoring open discovery required "privileges in derogation of the common law" be narrowly construed. Upon review of the matter, the Supreme Court held that the prohibition of "review" in Washington's quality improvement statute, RCW 70.41.200, refers to external review and not internal review. The Court held in this case that the hospital's consultation of its own privileged database to identify relevant, discoverable files that fall outside of the privilege would not violate the hospital's privilege. The Court affirmed the Court of Appeals and reversed the trial court.
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