Using Accident And Injury Records Of Strangers To Help Your Injury Case

If you are injured in a dangerous condition on someone’s property one of the first things they will say as a defense, is something like “that’s been there for a while and nobody else has been injured on it.”

If you are injured by a doctor who commits medical malpractice, you may want to know how many other patients may have been injured by that doctor–a pattern of poor medical decisions would seem to strengthen your malpractice case against that doctor.

If you were injured by a dangerous or defective product, it would be natural to want to know how many other people have been injured by that product.

All of these inquiries have one thing in common: they all involve third parties–other people, victims of negligence or malpractice or a defective product, and those people may have nothing to do with your case, and likely have no idea who you even are.

The Problem With Other People’s Records

It is natural to look at patterns–if, for example, a nursing home has a pattern and history of patients injured because of neglect or abuse, it makes it more likely that the nursing home abused your loved one. That would appear to be very convincing evidence to show a jury.

But the problem is that all these other people who may have been injured by the same thing or in the same way that you were, have their own rights to privacy; they don’t want it known that they were abused by a nursing home, or that they suffered a poor medical outcome from a doctor, or that their child was injured on a defective product.

Maybe they don’t care–but we don’t know, and unless we do know, they have a right to privacy to keep their names and identification and the facts of their accident, out of the public view, and certainly, to prevent it from being shown to a jury.

Solving the Problem

So, as an injury victim you have a problem–the most convincing evidence to show the Defendant was negligent, prior accidents or injuries sustained by others before you, is also evidence that is very hard to use because Defendants will object on the basis of the privacy of those people, and judges as well are hesitant to just allow strangers’ privacy rights to be violated.

Getting the Judge to Allow You to Use Records

That’s not to say that such evidence can’t be used at all.

Normally, when asking for this kind of evidence, you will draw an objection from the Defendant. The Defendant does have the right to assert the privacy rights of those strangers whose information you are trying to obtain.

The court will normally ask whether you actually need that information; that is; how important is it to your case, and are there other ways of winning your case, without using that kind of evidence.

A judge can prohibit you from using that information at all, but often, the judge will allow it with redactions–the identifying information of those strangers being blacked out or eliminated from the documents that you are using.

Either way, if you’re asking for information about a prior victim injured the same way you were–expect a fight from the Defendant.

Contact our Rhode Island injury lawyers at Robert E. Craven & Associates at 401-453-2700 for help getting the evidence you need in your injury case.

Source:

hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/privacy/guidance/introduction/index.html