Owens v. Fluz Fluz LLC, a Delaware limited liability company
- Maxine Chesney
- 3:24-cv-01083
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 2
In Owens v. Fluz Fluz LLC, Magistrate Judge Hixson ordered changes to medical-record redactions after reviewing them privately.
Ryan Owens, Fluz Fluz LLC, and the counsel responsible for the medical-record redactions.
What happened
In Owens v. Fluz Fluz LLC, the court reviewed redactions in Ryan Owens’s medical records to decide whether they fit the legal exception for records relevant to a patient’s lawsuit.
The court upheld most redactions but ruled that certain identifying information, printing details, and prescription information related to disputed medical conditions could not be hidden. It ordered Owens to correct the redactions and kept the medical-record exhibit sealed.
Magistrate Judge Thomas S. Hixson issued the order on April 8, 2025, and terminated docket entries 37 and 38.
The detailed version
- Owens v. Fluz Fluz LLC, a Delaware limited liability company · No. 3:24-cv-01083
- Maxine Chesney
- Apr. 8, 2025
Background
The court had previously said it would review privately the redactions in Plaintiff’s medical records. The purpose was to determine whether the redactions were consistent with the patient-litigation exception to the physician-patient and psychotherapist-patient privileges. The court rejected Dr. Amyanne Freeburg’s opinion that psychological evaluations consider the person as a whole, explaining that the legal exception is not that broad.
Ruling
The court sustained the redactions except for the following information:
- The patient’s date of birth and legal sex on the top right of every page of the Sutter Health records could not be redacted.
- The date and time the documents were printed could not be redacted.
- Pharmacy information for a prescription related to a medical condition at issue could not be redacted, including the identified examples at RYANOWENS000536 and RYANOWENS000540.
- The second prescription near the bottom of RYANOWENS000366 and the second prescription at the top of RYANOWENS000367 could not be redacted because the records showed that they related to conditions at issue.
- In many after-visit summaries, Plaintiff’s name and the date and time the document was printed could not be redacted.
- In the BioReference documents, information in the box labeled “patient” could not be redacted, except that the patient’s name had already remained visible; the court stated that none of the information in that box should be redacted.
- On the face sheet at RYANOWENS000745, most of the identification information in the top box could not be redacted. The two boxes at the top right could remain redacted because they related to conditions not at issue.
The court ordered Plaintiff to bring the redactions into compliance with the order. It also ordered Exhibit A to ECF No. 37, which contained a redacted version of Plaintiff’s medical records, to remain sealed. The order terminated ECF Nos. 37 and 38.
Effect of the Order
This was a discovery ruling about the scope of redactions and protection of medical records; it did not decide the underlying claims. Magistrate Judge Thomas S. Hixson issued the order.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.