A victory for patients, the tuling validates the Luvera Law Firm’s seven-year fight for justice for a patient left disabled following care at Virginia Mason Medical Center
The Washington Supreme Court recently ruled 6-3 that Virginia Mason Medical Center violated a decades-old patient-protection rule by privately communicating with an injured patient’s former treating doctors, without the patient’s knowledge or consent, over a span of years.
The decision, issued on October 1, 2026, follows a seven-year fight over that conduct, carried from the trial court through the Court of Appeals to the state’s highest court.
At the center of the issue is Wenatchee resident Michael Snyder, who was left with permanent disabling injuries after having surgery at Virginia Mason in January 2018. Snyder’s legal team, Luvera Law Firm attorneys David Beninger and John Gagliardi, together with appellate counsel Catherine Wright Smith and Howard Goodfriend of Smith Goodfriend, pressed the issue at every level, pursuing accountability for the procedural breach and the harm caused.
“This outcome matters for every patient who brings a medical negligence claim in Washington state,” said Gagliardi. “The state Supreme Court said ‘no’ to hospitals trying to take shortcuts and engage in back-channel conversations with former providers and said ‘yes’ to upholding patients’ legal rights to fair and equitable process and imposing consequences for hospital misconduct.”
Patient protection against secret conversations
When patients file a lawsuit against a medical institution, their medical condition becomes part of the case, and the medical professionals who treated them are important witnesses. In Loudon v. Mhyre (1988), the Washington Supreme Court held that defense lawyers may not have private, one-sided conversations with a plaintiff’s treating doctors. Those conversations usually occur through formal discovery, such as depositions, with the patient and their legal team’s knowledge and consent.
Writing for the majority in Snyder, Justice Steven González described the rule as protecting “two values our society holds dear: first, a doctor’s long-standing obligation to protect their patients’ confidentiality, and second, a defendant’s right to investigate claims against them.”
The Court in Loudon gave three reasons for the rule that requires defense lawyers to use formal discovery rules when contacting treating physicians:
- Private contact between defense lawyers and a patient’s doctors could discourage patients from seeking care, “chilling the doctor-patient relationship.”
- Doctors have their own interest in avoiding accidental, improper disclosure of a patient’s confidential information.
- If a lawyer’s memory of a private conversation differs from the doctor’s, the lawyer could end up as an impeachment witness.
While the rule limits how defense lawyers reach a patient’s doctors, it does not stop the conversation. As the state Supreme Court put it, “defense counsel is permitted to speak with any or all of the plaintiff’s nonparty doctors. These cases merely require the defense to have those communications either with the plaintiff’s knowledge and consent or through the formal discovery rules.”
Medical errors, compounded by legal violations
Michael Snyder underwent major surgery at Virginia Mason in January 2018. During the procedure, a catheter line ended up outside the vein, and when it was withdrawn, he “suffered a massive hemorrhage in his chest and a prolonged cardiac arrest.” The medical team saved his life, but because of the complications from the misplaced catheter, Snyder was left with permanent, disabling injuries.
Snyder filed a legal claim in March 2019. The hospital soon identified three doctors involved in the surgery whom Snyder had not named. All three had left Virginia Mason, but the hospital remained responsible for their defense and any liability for their care; it arranged their legal counsel and shared risk managers and a claims administrator with them.
What followed, as the Supreme Court describes it, was improper private contacts with those doctors that continued while the hospital told Snyder and the court it had no such access.
The hospital’s own privilege log listed over 400 instances of communications that may have violated Snyder’s right to have his attorney present. Snyder and his attorneys did not know about these ongoing communications for the first few years of litigation and only became aware of them after obtaining court orders forcing their disclosure.
When the contact came to light, the trial judge did not mince words, calling it “a pretty major ethical violation” and telling the defense it would be wiser to “just acknowledge and address rather than creating smokescreens around it.” The judge added that the communications “were per se a violation of Washington state law conducted by people who frankly know that law about 20 times better than I do and who are statewide experts on that law.”
Seeking justice over seven years and three courts
Identifying this violation was only the first step. The harder question was what the patient would have to prove to find justice, and Snyder’s legal team pushed the issue all the way to the Washington Supreme Court.
- Trial court. The judge found that Virginia Mason violated the rule but denied Snyder’s request for a default judgment on liability, because the record lacked enough information to show the violation “substantially prejudiced” the plaintiff. The hospital kept secret most of the records that could have proven prejudice by claiming privilege.
- Court of Appeals. The Court agreed the hospital broke the rule but held that Snyder bore the burden of proving harm, treating the violation as an ordinary discovery problem and finding that the hospital had not waived its privilege.
- Washington Supreme Court. Both parties petitioned for review on certain issues, with Snyder’s team arguing that placing the burden on the patient to prove prejudice rewards the violator, especially when the evidence of harm sits in records the hospital is improperly hiding under a claim of privilege. The Supreme Court agreed with Snyder on all issues.
Ruling signals victory for Washington state patients’ rights
The Washington Supreme Court majority reached three conclusions:
- The hospital broke the Loudon rule. Virginia Mason and multiple amicus argued that, for a variety of reasons, the rule should not apply to formerly employed doctors who might share blame for the injury and for whom the hospital would be vicariously liable. The Court disagreed, noting that Snyder had not named these doctors as defendants and that letting the defense decide which doctors fall outside the rule “would gut Loudon.” The Court concluded that “none of the reasons Virginia Mason gives to depart from Loudon are persuasive.”
- Harm to the patient is now presumed. The Court rejected the lower courts’ approach as to proof of harm, finding that “Treating a Loudon violation as merely a discovery violation is insufficient to safeguard the policies underlying Loudon.” Instead, “upon finding a Loudon violation, prejudice is presumed and plaintiffs need not prove an actual impact on the litigation in order to obtain relief.” The trial judge must choose the appropriate remedy depending on the degree of prejudice shown.
- The hospital partly gave up confidentiality protection. Washington law generally shields a hospital’s internal quality improvement (QI) records from lawsuits. But because a QI committee member also took part in the Snyder litigation, the Court found the hospital “at least partially waived” that protection. Records tied to his role “cannot be shielded.”
The Court ordered that the case be sent back to the trial court to reconsider the appropriate remedy for the hospital’s clear violation of the Loudon rule, after a full review of the withheld records.
Lessons for patients and families pursuing medical negligence claims in Washington
The ruling holds hospitals to the same rules of fair process that apply to everyone in a lawsuit and, for the first time, allows for an assumption of prejudice if the hospital doesn’t play fair. For patients and families considering a medical negligence claim in Washington, several points stand out:
- Your doctors still owe you confidentiality after you file a claim. The duty does not end because the doctor once worked for the hospital you are suing.
- The defense can still talk to its previously employed doctors, but not in secret. Conversations can usually only happen with your knowledge and consent, or through formal discovery.
- A hospital cannot decide on its own that a doctor falls outside the rule. The Court rejected an exception for any doctor “the defendant hospital decides might be implicated in a plaintiff’s injury.”
- When the rule is broken, the patient does not carry the burden of proving harm. The Court reasoned that requiring proof while at the same time denying access to relevant facts imposes an “almost insurmountable burden on the party that has done nothing wrong.”
“It’s significant that the Court upheld the Loudon restrictions on communications and rejected the Virginia Mason legal team’s attempt to graft another exception onto the rule,” said Gagliardi. “But probably more significant is that now it will be easier for patients and families pursuing plaintiffs’ cases to be able to seek a remedy if hospitals violate the rule. Before, defendants could do these things and there would be little or no consequences. Now there’s a presumption of harm to the plaintiff.”
What comes next
Snyder’s case will be returned to the trial court, which will need to review the withheld records and decide on the best way to remedy the harm caused to Snyder by Virginia Mason’s unlawful conduct.
Luvera Law Firm attorneys noted that reaching this step demonstrates the value of seeing an issue through. A violation found at the trial court level could have ended without a meaningful remedy for Snyder, if he and his legal team had been forced to bear the burden of proof. Instead, it took years of appellate advocacy to get this result.
“We’re thankful for the thoughtful work of the state Supreme Court justices in concluding that the duties that doctors and hospitals owe their patients carry into the courtroom — and that any institution that disregards those duties will be held accountable,” said Luvera Law Firm’s Beninger. “Now, we’re eager to continue with our advocacy for Michael and his family, to ensure they secure the justice they deserve for the tragedy they’ve endured.”
