Brannock Berman & Seider Helps Convince Federal Appeals Court to Issue Rare Writ of Mandamus

Along with the talented team at Johnson Jackson PLLC, Brannock Berman & Seider obtained extraordinary writ relief from the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in a first-of-its-kind dispute about the scope of a statutory healthcare privilege.

The mandamus petition arose out of discovery in an employment-discrimination lawsuit filed by a physician against her former employer. After she was fired for committing surgical errors, the physician sought internal company documents about the performance of other doctors who were not fired for, she claimed, also committing errors. The hospital system responded that some of these files were privileged under a law passed by Congress in 2005 to protect patient safety work product. A magistrate judge determined that the files were privileged, but the district court overruled that finding and ordered the hospital to produce them. Fearing a major disruption in its quality-control operations, the hospital system hired Brannock Berman & Seider to help appeal the district court’s decision.

In a published opinion, the Eleventh Circuit overturned the district court’s ruling, agreeing with the hospital that the district court’s legal analysis was flawed. Embracing arguments made by Brannock Berman & Seider and its co-counsel with Johnson Jackon, the Eleventh Circuit clarified the proper way to interpret federal law and rejected the doctor’s arguments for an exception to the privilege. The result on remand, applying the proper legal analysis, was that the district court agreed with the hospital and declared the files to be privileged and exempt from production in the litigation.