In re Austin Maintenance & Construction, Inc. (No. 01-23-00935-CV; May 30, 2024) arose from a personal injury suit alleging that Plaintiff suffered serious injuries in a collision between her vehicle and a vehicle driven by an Austin Maintenance employee. Plaintiff disclosed that she incurred $173,050.03 in past medical expenses, the vast majority of which were charged by a pain management clinic for nerve-related injections. Defendant served written discovery, including a request that Plaintiff execute a medical authorization to permit access to Plaintiff’s medical records. Plaintiff refused, arguing that she already provided some treatment records for injuries related to the accident and that Defendant’s request was overbroad. She argued further that Texas Rule of Civil Procedure 194.2(b)(10) “gave her the unilateral right either to (1) produce medical records and bills herself, or (2) execute a medical authorization permitting the disclosure of medical records and bills, but not both.” The trial court agreed and denied Defendant’s motion to compel Plaintiff to execute the authorization. Subsequently, when Defendant sought discovery of Plaintiff’s treatment records and information concerning negotiated rates from the pain management clinic, the clinic refused on the basis that Plaintiff had not executed a medical authorization. Again Defendant moved to compel execution of the authorization, and again the trial court denied it. Defendant sought mandamus relief.
In a per curiam opinion, the court of appeals conditionally granted Defendant’s petition for writ of mandamus and directed the trial court to vacate her order denying the motion to compel. Defendant argued that SCOTX precedent entitles it to discovery from the provider of the provider’s negotiated rates and Plaintiff’s medical history, including pre-existing conditions, regardless of whether Plaintiff may have disclosed and produced some part of the relevant records. The court agreed that SCOTX authority permits such discovery, subject only to proper tailoring to assure that the requested discovery is not overbroad. Here Defendant agreed to limit the temporal scope of its request to five years prior to the accident, which precedent also has found acceptable. The court thus held that Defendant’s motion to compel Plaintiff to execute the authorization was not overbroad.
As to Plaintiff’s argument that she could produce records in lieu of executing an authorization under Rule 194.2(b)(1), the court observed that Plaintiff had cited no authority for her position and that a plain reading of the rule did not “preclude[] a defendant from seeking production of relevant documents . . . or from requesting . . . a properly tailored medical release.” Put another way, a plaintiff may not block an otherwise proper request for discovery simply by selectively providing some of the records voluntarily. The court further rejected Plaintiff’s argument that Defendant should have first sought to compel production of the records from the providers before moving to compel Plaintiff to execute the authorization. On the contrary, Defendant’s motion to compel the authorization was a more efficient use of judicial resources in any event. And finally, although the issue was not properly before the court, the court nevertheless rejected Plaintiff’s argument that being compelled to execute a release “is equivalent to asking her to create and produce a nonexistent document” in violation of TRCP 196.”
The court had no difficulty finding that Defendant did not have an adequate remedy on appeal. The trial court’s order not only blocked access to the relevant discovery deprived Defendant of its defense, it had the effect of preventing the discovery from being made part of the appellate record “such that a reviewing court is unable to evaluate the effect of the trial court’s error based on the record” (citing In re K&L Auto Crushers, LLC).
Here is another example of a trial court simply not following the law and making an appellate court force the issue. But the case also demonstrates how gaming the judicial process to inflate medical expenses in personal injury litigation has seriously distorted the system. This problem is likely to be a focus for legislative discussion next spring.
