In Re Lucas Trenshaw and Theresa Gardner, as Personal Representative for the Estate of Timothy Trenshaw v. Eugene…

Summary

The court made absolute its order to show cause and held that medical records containing information a patient provided to a treating physician during treatment for an injury are protected by the physician-patient privilege. The privilege protects the communications and records even when they include otherwise discoverable facts about how the injury occurred, so the trial court erred by reviewing the records in camera and parsing them sentence by sentence. The court also held that the patient did not waive the privilege by failing to provide a formal privilege log because counsel timely asserted the privilege and the opposing parties suffered no prejudice.