Medical and Legal Duties

In part 2, the similarities and differences in the duties and obligations of doctors and lawyers to their patients and clients, respectively, under the doctor-patient and attorney-client relationships are explored. The right of patients to prevent the disclosure in legal proceedings of confidences acquired by their doctors and their corresponding private rights of action with respect to unauthorized disclosures have developed slowly and unevenly. They are today subject to various limitations and exceptions. In contrast, the duty of lawyers to maintain the confidence of client communications to them and the privilege of their clients to prevent such disclosures in court have been well-established for more than two centuries. The different legal treatment accorded the doctor-patient and the attorney-client relationships is rooted in differences in the nature of their duties to their patients/clients and to society and the deep interweaving of the attorney-client relationship into the fabric of the Anglo-Saxon adversarial system of justice. Nevertheless, under modern conditions, the nature of these duties and the corresponding privileges are changing, principally in response to the increased corporatization of the practice of medicine and law and other developments which have caused tension between the rights of individuals and society.

Traditional Bases for Confidentiality

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) to disclose "mental impressions, conclusions, opinions or legal theories of an attorney." Floyd says the struggle in the courts over the scope of the work product doctrine reflects "the tension between the need for a party to have everything necessary to cross-examine a witness effectively and the policies underlying protection of information through the work product doctrine and the attorney-client privilege." 2. Waivers. Another trend has been the tendency of the courts to construe strictly against the client the effect of waivers of the privilege through intentional, careless or inadvertent disclosures of otherwise privileged materials or the making of disclosures in the presence of non-attorneys. In Steinhardt Partners L.P. v. U.S., 4 F.3d 230 (2d Cir. 1993), the defendant in a securities fraud investigation of the Securities and Exchange Commission voluntarily gave the SEC certain papers developed by his attorneys. Later, in a private action against him, private investor-plaintiffs demanded their production and prevailed on a waiver theory. The protections afforded criminal defendants in this area are still, however, broad. In a recent case, a police office guarding a prisoner during his interview with a psychiatrist ove
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Supreme Court, Fifth Amendment, ATTORNEY-CLIENT RELATIONSHIP, Medicaid Medicare, Rule Evidence, Chemical Bank, Garner Wolfin, Evidence Code, Conduct Rule, Professions Code, attorney-client privilege, doctor-patient attorney-client, 2d cir, federal rule, patient confidences, supreme court, product doctrine, federal rule evidence, francis bacon, rule evidence, code sec, 17 st tr, anglesea 17 st, st tr 1228, tr 1228 1743,
Approximate Word count = 3160
Approximate Pages = 13 (250 words per page)

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