MSP and Pharmanet Printouts Disclosable on a Case by Case Basis

Two documents that ICBC routinely asks Plaintiff’s to produce in the course of personal injury lawsuits are MSP and Pharmanet Printouts.  These are documents which essentially keep track of all of a Plaintiff’s medical visits and prescription medication fillings.  Does a Plaintiff need to comply with a request to produce these documents?  Reasons for judgement were released last month by the BC Supreme Court, Victoria Registry, addressing this issue finding that these documents are not automatically producible but very well may be depending on the facts of the case.
In last month’s case (Edwards v. Ganzer) the Plaintiff was injured in a 2008 collision.  In the course of the lawsuit ICBC requested that the Plaintiff produce her MSP and Pharmanet Printouts for various periods of time.  Ultimately the Plaintiff was required to produce some of these records.  Prior to making the production order Master Bouck provided the following reasons addressing production requests for these records:

[51] Thus, in a personal injury action, a plaintiff’s MSP and Med Profile will not be ordered produced to the defence regardless of the facts of the case. At the very least, there must be some “air of reality” between the documents and the issues in the action: Moukhine v. Collins at para. 22.

[52] Correspondingly, decisions where the production of these kinds of records have been denied will likely have little or no precedential value to the plaintiff here as the facts are bound to differ from those in the case at bar.

[53] Neither of these propositions represents a change in the law since the introduction of the SCCR.

[54] What is new to this discussion is the role that proportionality plays in making an order under Rule 7-1(14). Although not specifically provided for in Rule 7-1, it is only logical that the court should take into account the objects stated in Rule 1?3 (2) when exercising its discretion with respect to compliance with the broader disclosure demand: see Kim v. Lin, 2010 BCSC 1386 at para. 29. Indeed, those objectives have been considered by the court in the decisions already cited.

[55] In terms of relevancy, the plaintiff has already acknowledged the relevancy of the MSP and Med Profile records by disclosing these records on her initial list of documents. It would seem apparent that the plaintiff concedes that this document ought to be produced under the Guano test.

[56] While the plaintiff’s submissions suggest that privacy concerns come into play, there is no evidence from the plaintiff herself (either directly or on information and belief) which might justify aHalliday form of order: Gorse v. Straker, 2010 BCSC 119 at paras. 12, 13 and 36.

[57] Paraphrasing the test set out in Global Pacific, the issue to be determined is whether the MSP and/or Med Profile records sought can properly be said to contain information which mayenable the defendant to advance his case or damage the case of the plaintiff, if it is a document which may fairly lead to a train of inquiry, or if it may have either of these consequences.

[58] Both the evidence and pleadings raised issues of mitigation (i.e. rehabilitation efforts; following professional advice on medication). In that respect, both the MSP and Med Profile record may enable the defence to prove that the plaintiff has failed to mitigate her damages. In addition, these records may serve the purpose described in Creed v. Dorio; that is, to test the credibility and reliability of the evidence presented by the plaintiff to date on her post-accident health.

[59] I have concluded that on the facts of this case, the plaintiff’s MSP record and the post-accident Med Profile ought to be listed and produced pursuant to the demand made under Rule 7-1(11).