West’s Business Law, Case Study Example

Facts

Julius Steinberg appealed a previous judgment from the Appellate Courts in May 17, 1933. Ruling favored the plaintiff in Steinberg v. New York Life Ins. Co., 238 App. Div. 206, and so the original decision was reversed.  This was in conjunction with the plaintiff seeking disability benefits under the insurance company’s policies. New York Life Ins. Co., however refused to pay for the plaintiff’s disability benefits citing that the plaintiff lied on his application. During the first trial, this lack of veracity was found out as the insurer called a physician as a witness who claimed that they were the first physician to see the plaintiff and testified that the plaintiff was suffering from pulmonary tuberculosis for the past seven months. The plaintiff called two doctors to the stand who were not in fact allowed to testify to the plaintiff’s condition because of patient privilege. The court then held that the plaintiff had waived his right to this privilege in having called up a physician to the witness stand. The results of this were that the insurance company was cited has having should have allowed physicians’ testimony on the side of the plaintiff because of this waiver so that it could be established that the plaintiff had in fact been suffering from pulmonary tuberculosis for several years.The insurance company claimed that the defendant lied on the stand by stating that prior to the date of the plaintiff’s application the plaintiff had suffered from pulmonary tuberculosis and that he had consulted with and been examined by physicians. The other physicians were called to the stand and testified that the defendant had come to see them more than seven months prior to the first physician but that these physicians were not allowed to testify anything beyond saying that the defendant was sick. The court ruled that the physicians were not allowed to say more because of the patient/physician confidentiality citing it violated section 352 of the Civil Practice Act “”A person duly authorized to practice physic or surgery, or a professional or registered nurse, shall not  [**153] be allowed to disclose any information which he acquired in attending a patient [***7]  in a professional capacity, and which was necessary to enable him to act in that capacity.”Also, section 354 states that such confidentiality may be waived by the patient during trial. The section does not, however, specify what constitutes a waiver. The court, however, originally held up the Revised Statutes of 1830 (2 R. S. 406, ß 73) that states that a physician cannot disclose a patient’s information. The statute was revised however to include the patient’s right to waive such confidentiality. The decision was made in which the court reversed their original judgment from the lower court and granted the plaintiff a new trail.

Issue

The issue was whether or not the plaintiff was allowed to call a physician to the witness stand on their behalf in order to testify as to their condition without negating the patient/physician confidentiality and the plaintiff should have been able to include testimony from other physicians as court testimony.

Decision

Court overturned its original ruling and the plaintiff was granted a new trial.

Reasoning

This new trial was put into effect as the court stated that the purpose of patient/physician confidentiality is to protect the patient from any humiliating facts revealed about them on the witness stand. Disclosure of such secretive and personal facts might be irreparable testimony to the patient. The court stated that the testimony by the defendant’s witness, the first physician, was permitted, following physicians should have had their testimony included in the trial as it would be considered erroneous to have one physician reveal a client’s condition and then not allow other physicians to say the same thing (a statement that would have supported the plaintiff’s claim of having suffered from the disease at the time of him signing the insurance company’s documents). Thus, the testimony of the other physicians would not have caused the plaintiff to suffer from any further humiliation as the facts of his health were already revealed by the first physician to take the stand. The plaintiff should have been able to have the other physicians as witnesses in this case in order to establish a timeline; a timeline, that the insurance company was trying to negate by stating that the plaintiff had not been suffering from pulmonary tuberculosis at the time of his signing.