Verdicts

Florida's Circuit Court for the Seventeenth Judicial Circuit, Broward County, has held that, in a case in which a plaintiff sought discovery of a hospital's records of patient falls over a period of five years, the trial court's order denying the hospital's objections to the discovery requests did not depart from the essential requirements of Florida's constitutional law permitting such discovery, and that law is not contrary to federal statutory law or the U.S. Constitution. Columbia Hosp. Corp. of South Broward v. Fain, — So.3d —-, 2009 WL 2516917 (Fla.App. 4 Dist., 8/19/09).

Decedent William Fain fell out of his bed and died of his injuries while an inpatient at Columbia Hospital Corporation of South Broward (Columbia), d/b/a Westside Regional Medical Center, in Florida. His estate sued Columbia for medical negligence. In discovery, and pursuant to Amendment 7 of Florida's constitution, the estate requested incident reports concerning the decedent's fall. (Article X, Section 25 of the Florida Constitution, enacted as “Amendment 7,” concerns a patient's right to discover records related to adverse medical incidents.) The estate also asked for all adverse medical incident reports filed in the previous five years relating to falls of other patients who were under “fall precautions.” Columbia objected to the requests on a number of grounds, including that the tenets of Amendment 7 did not comport with federal statutory law and with the U.S. Constitution. The trial court entered an order compelling production.