Court upholds dismissal of injury claim after woman refuses to sign medical authorizations

Tamara Filas was rear-ended in January of 2010 by a vehicle driven by Kevin Culpert.  She sued him, but then refused to execute medical authorizations that his insurer demanded to enable it to copy her records.  The insurer than sought summary disposition of Filas' claim.  A very patient trial judge carefully instructed Filas that her objections to the execution of record copy deposition authorizations and her objections to the breadth of the record request had already been "over-ruled" by statutes, court rules and decisions that opened her medical history to the person she sued.  Filas appeared to acknowledge her duty to cooperate, but did not.

At a second hearing, the judge--still demonstrating incredible patience--offered her the choice of signing the authorizations or dismissing her lawsuit.  He again explained that this was not a matter left to his discretion:  having sued, she had waived the objections she was raising.  The plaintiff continued to refuse to sign the authorizations and her case was dismissed.  She appealed and the decision to dismiss was affirmed this week by the higher court.