I work at a law firm and recently we had to request medical records from a Plaintiff from the Department of Defense. Simple request (class action lawsuit), we had the written authorization from the Plaintiff and the reason had nothing to do with the government of the military.
They didn’t respond after 3 requests, so we subpoened the records.
We got a letter back from the Department of Defense that said, “We no longer accept subpoenas.”
WTF?!
Every schmuck in the USA is required by law to respond to a legal subpoena for records.
In any other country, this would be the act of a military junta taking over the laws of the land. What the hell is going on?
I work for the United States Government, in an office that does not deal with secret or sensitive items.
There is a standing instruction in my office stating that I shall not supply office data in response to a supoena.
The instructions read something like this:
“Before the court date, take this letter to the presiding judge and explain that you cannot supply the requested documents.
If the judge insists that you must provide said documents, notify us and we will send someone with the money to post bail, as you may be arrested for contempt of court.”
The above is signed by the U.S. Regional Attorney. It’s date is 1979, so this policy has been in effect since the Carter Administration.
The reason given for this policy is that the government doesn’t have the manpower to send persons to sit in court and wait to be called to the witness stand to testify that said documents are valid. Multiply this scene by tens of thousands of court cases and you get the picture of what could happen if no such policy was in effect.
Twice I’ve had documents supoenaed, and both times the judge read the letter prior to the trial, placed a copy of the letter in the case documents and told me not to appear, he’d “handle it”.
Like it or not, you can hardly blame this policy on Bush. It’s been in place for over 25 years at the agency I work for. (USDA)
So, being the managerial and legally qualified geniuses that you are, you said to yourself:
“Let us get a Clerk of the Court to rubber stamp a subpoena to grab these records from that bunch of bureaucrats in the big office block in the Central Business District who have an overarching responsibility for the 300 (or whatever) health units”
You do this, instead of doing the sensible thing, which is to issue the subpoena to the place WHERE THE MEDICAL RECORDS ARE ACTUALLY STORED.
Sorry, having quite often been in a similar position to your bogeyman Dept of Defense, I am not in sympathy with your case at all. Your firm is as sloppy, incompetent and stupid a legal firm as any I have the displeasure of dealing with.
DMark, this is longstanding government policy that can’t be blamed on Bush.
You might have some success by having your client talk to his congressman and getting his office to compel release of the records. All federal agencies have offices dedicated to handling requests from lawmakers.
I really think that if our records were likely to be an important part of a case, the presiding judge would contact the regional attorney and permission to honor the subpoena would be granted.
We have no such policy here in Australia. I’ve been responsible for ensuring that the court got all the records subpoenaed from our large semi-government organisation. However, it is possible to get around the appearing-in-court part of a court order here. There’s a form that must be signed by the organisation’s Secretary - sure simplifies things.
