The physician-patient privilege is not absolute in workers' compensation, but neither is a defendant's right to discovery. Although filing a claim waives the privilege for conditions placed at issue, foundational cases, such as Allison v. WCAB, 72 Cal. App. 4th 654, established that this waiver does not grant defendants unfettered access to an applicant's entire medical history. That creates a constant tension between an applicant's constitutional right to privacy and a defendant's right to relevant information.
Two recent panel decisions from the Workers' Compensation Appeals Board (WCAB), Williams v. Chino Valley Independent Fire District, 2025 Cal. Wrk. Comp. P.D. LEXIS 339 and Tran v. UL, LLC, 2025 Cal. Wrk. Comp. P.D. LEXIS 340, provide a practical roadmap for navigating this complex terrain. Read together, they act as a clear warning against overbroad discovery tactics while simultaneously affirming a defendant's right to relevant discovery through the power of a well-crafted protective order to obtain necessary, sensitive information.
In Williams v. Chino Valley Independent Fire District,[1] the sole disputed issue was whether treatment to an applicant's varicose veins was required to cure or relieve the effects of his industrial injury. The defendant served a subpoena on Kaiser Permanente seeking all of the applicant's treatment records for a five-year period. The applicant filed a petition to quash the subpoena, arguing that it was overbroad and violated his right to privacy. A workers' compensation judge (WCJ) denied the petition.
The WCAB granted the applicant’s petition for removal, rescinded the WCJ’s order and returned the matter to the trial level. It held that the defendant's "blanket request for all treatment records" was overbroad and constituted a violation of the applicant's constitutional right to privacy. Because the discovery sought was not directly relevant to the narrow dispute — treatment for varicose veins — it was not essential to a fair resolution of the claim. The WCAB encouraged the parties to engage in good-faith discussions to narrow the scope of the request to only those records relevant to the disputed issue.
In Tran v. UL, LLC,[2] the applicant alleged an industrial injury to his head and brain. During discovery, the defendant sought the raw testing data and materials from the applicant's treating neuropsychologist. That practitioner refused to produce the records, citing professional ethics and patient privacy. The defendant filed a petition to compel production. The WCJ granted the defendant’s request, ordering the records to be produced under a detailed protective order.
The WCAB affirmed the WCJ's discovery order, but granted removal for the limited purpose of correcting clerical errors and strengthening the protective order. It reasoned that by placing his neuropsychological condition at issue, the applicant had partially waived his right to privacy regarding that condition. It concluded that the WCJ had properly balanced the defendant’s due process right to discovery against the applicant’s privacy rights by crafting a remedy that allowed access to relevant information while protecting its confidentiality. The amended protective order strictly limited who could review the raw data (defense counsel and medical experts), made defense counsel responsible for ensuring expert confidentiality and prohibited the data from being offered into evidence.
These two decisions, while reaching opposite conclusions on the discoverability of the specific records sought, provide a unified and clear framework for practitioners navigating discovery and privacy rights. They underscore that the permissibility of a discovery request is a matter of precision and necessity.
Williams, on the one hand, generally prohibits defense practitioners from using boilerplate, overbroad subpoenas. A request for "all records" is highly vulnerable to being quashed if it is not targeted at the specific medical conditions in dispute. There must be a nexus between the information sought and the disputed issues in the case. The decision empowers applicant attorneys to defend against fishing expeditions into unrelated medical history.
Tran, on the other hand, confirms that an applicant cannot use the shield of privacy to prevent discovery of information that is directly relevant and necessary to the defense, even when that information is highly sensitive. By putting a body part or condition at issue, the applicant opens the door to discovery. The proper remedy for protecting privacy and addressing ethical concerns, such as a psychologist's duty to maintain test security, is not to deny discovery outright, but to craft a stringent protective order. The WCAB's willingness to amend and strengthen the WCJ's order in Tran signals that when there is a dispute, such orders must be robust and detailed to pass muster.
Together, these cases instruct that the path forward in medical discovery disputes is through narrowly tailored requests and, when necessary, carefully crafted protective orders. For defendants, that means abandoning broad requests in favor of precision. For applicants, it means recognizing that placing a condition at issue creates a waiver, and the battle probably will be fought over the scope of a protective order rather than the fundamental right to discovery.
For further discussion regarding application of the physician-patient privilege in workers' compensation, see Sullivan on Comp Section 14.15 Legal Privilege.