ICBC Medical Exams and Secret Tape Recordings
Further to my previous post discussing the topic of taping independent medical exams, reasons for judgement were released today demonstrating that BC Courts are not very receptive to such evidence if secretly obtained.
In the 2006 case of Wong v. Wong the BC Court of Appeal made it clear that permission for a Plaintiff to record a defence medical exam will rarely be granted. Sometimes Plaintiff’s have recorded such exams without seeking the court’s permission first. While the secret audio recording of an independent medical exam by a participant is not necessarily a criminal offence in Canada, it is frowned upon. One remedy a Court can exercise when presented with such evidence is to simply exclude it from trial. Today’s case used exactly this remedy.
In today’s case (Anderson v. Dwyer) the Plaintiff was injured in a 2004 rear end crash. ICBC, on behalf of the Defendant, admitted fault for the accident but disputed the extent of the Plaintiff’s injuries. In the course of the lawsuit the Plaintiff attended a medical exam with Dr. Locht, an orthopaedic surgeon selected by ICBC. The Plaintiff surreptitiously recorded this exam and then her lawyer tried to make use of this recording at trial. Mr. Justice Schultes was not receptive to this and disallowed the use of this recording for cross examination purposes. While the reasons for judgement did not have an analysis of why the Court used this remedy the following was highlighted:
[12] The plaintiff also admitted surreptitiously recording her examination by Dr. Locht, the orthopaedic surgeon who conducted an independent medical examination of her on behalf of the defendant. ( This came to light as a result of an objection by the defendant’s counsel during the cross-examination of Dr. Locht. The plaintiff’s counsel did not use the transcript any further after the objection and nothing in my analysis of Dr. Locht’s evidence turns on its use.)
[13] Her explanation for this action was that she wanted an accurate record of everything that was said during the examination and was concerned that she would not be able to recall it herself without assistance. She felt she had been treated disrespectfully by representatives of the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia during a previous meeting about this litigation and, I gather, that as a result she was suspicious of how the examination would be conducted.
[14] She maintained that she did not originally intend to use the recording in the litigation but that a friend had typed it up for her shortly before the trial so that she could refresh her memory and at that point she found discrepancies between the transcript and Dr. Locht’s report. She intended it to be used during cross-examination only if “the truth wasn’t coming out” in his evidence…
[43] It was suggested to Dr. Locht that his report presented some of the plaintiff’s symptoms in a misleading way. For example, he described her as having “no sleep disorder”, although she told him that her neck pain woke her several times throughout the night. His explanation was that because she was still getting six hours of sleep per night, in total, he did not consider that she had a sleep disorder. Similarly, he described the plaintiff as being “physically capable” of continuing all work, household, and recreational activities that she could do before the accident, despite her descriptions of experiencing severe pain (and in one case nausea) after engaging in them. He explained that his determination that a person is physically able to perform an activity does not depend on whether she in fact avoids that activity because it causes her pain…
[49] With respect to the plaintiff’s general credibility, I did not find her recording of the examination by Dr. Locht, her failure to disclose potentially relevant documents, or her “hands on” involvement in this litigation to be as significant as the defendant suggested. However improper surreptitious recording of medical interviews may be, it appeared to me that this recording was a reflection of the plaintiff’s suspicious and hostile view of ICBC and of her desire to protect herself from the unfair treatment that she expected to receive from its representative, rather than of any desire to manipulate the evidence.
Given the very important role expert witnesses play in injury litigation it is fair to debate whether tape recordings should routinely be used to add greater objectivity to the IME process. Unless and until this comes about our Court’s will continue to struggle with the use this evidence will be put to when parties choose to obtain evidence through surreptitious recording.
