Auto accidents are one of the leading sources of nonindustrial apportionment in California workers’ compensation claims, and a small subset of those result from driving under the influence.

John P. Kamin

As a result, knowing how to get records pertaining to auto accidents and DUIs is vital to a workers’ compensation defense strategy. With more applicants’ attorneys pleading internal on claims, signs of drinking and substance abuse problems are important for medical experts to acknowledge, as alcohol and other substance abuse can cause orthopedic, internal and psychological problems.

Where to begin

The most common way to find out about an applicant’s auto accident and DUI history is through an ISO Search, the deposition (by asking if the driver’s license has ever been suspended or revoked), talking to the employer, and medical records from personal physicians.

What next

Your favorite subpoena company is going to want detailed information for all your subpoena targets, such as the:

• Date, time and location of the accident. By location, we need the names of the road or highway the accident occurred on, and a cross street or exit number.
• If issuing a subpoena to an auto insurer, try to get the claim number and policy number. (This is often found on an ISO search.)
• If issuing a subpoena to a law enforcement agency, jail or prison, they’ll want the full name of the person, including any aliases. If the applicant served time in a state prison, he will have a CDCR number. CDCR stands for California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Identifying subpoena targets

For a standard auto accident, subpoena targets are often:

• Auto insurers.
• Ambulance agencies that picked up the applicant.
• Local law enforcement (more on this below).
• Any emergency room where the applicant went. A brief conversation with an imaging tech informed me that local hospital emergency rooms are always prepared to rush auto accident victims into imaging departments to identify any broken bones and internal bleeding.
• Personal injury attorneys and their physicians of choice, whether it be a chiropractor, neurologist or orthopedic surgeon.

When issuing a subpoena to law enforcement (including for DUI and felony convictions), it’s important to know the distinctions among law enforcement agencies. Typically, this goes as follows:

• Towns and cities often have a local police department.
• In more rural areas with smaller towns, often the county sheriff will contract with local towns to provide police services. This means that the county sheriff will have the records.
• State police agencies, such as the California Highway Patrol, often respond to accidents on freeways and highways.

If the applicant spent any time behind bars, that could mean two things:

• He spent time in the county jail.
• He was incarcerated in a state prison, which is different than the county jail.

Law enforcement agencies often dedicate an officer/deputy/clerk to responding to subpoenas. These people are often friendly and straightforward and want to comply with your subpoena requests, especially in cases where the person is a convicted felon.

Be prepared for a phone call from one of these clerks asking for more details about what you’re looking for. One area that can cause confusion is if the applicant used an alias or different name for the accident or DUI you’re trying to find out more about. After all, if an applicant uses seven to 10 different names, that poor officer will have to plug myriad names into his database.

This is where Google can be helpful, too. Many jails and prisons have inmate lists that will populate in response to a Google search.

Then, of course, there’s the California Incarcerated Records and Information Search (CIRIS), which is always worth a look.

What next?

Time to issue your subpoenas with all of this detailed information. Keep an eye on your phone or voicemail for any responses.

When you get your subpoenaed records, the law enforcement agency reports will often identify any injury complaints, whether medical care was declined, ambulance response details, and, sometimes, even which emergency room the applicant went to.

In other words, if your first subpoena comes back with only partial details, there may be more leads for more details that can provide better results in a second batch of subpoenas.

County jail and prison records will often detail whether an applicant needed medical treatment. Some topics that have come up in the past are:

• Treatment for anxiety in county jail.
• Treatment for detox, as some applicants need time to come down from whatever substance they’re on.

Memory problems

Even with all this information, some alcoholics and drug abusers are going to have a limited memory of the event that got them into trouble. This is a tricky area. The person with a 0.10 blood alcohol content reading should remember most details, but a DUI offender with a 0.20 BAC or higher may have little to no memory at all of the event in question.

Years ago, I deposed an applicant who was claiming that his specific work injury caused severe psychological trauma. A few months before he started the job with the specific work injury, he had no memory of being arrested for being naked and violent in a motel parking lot, which was the direct result of the massive amount of amphetamine he had ingested. The county sheriff took him to the local hospital to detox, and the nurses’ notes kept mentioning his complaints of seeing an imaginary dog in his hospital room. It’s fair to understand that this applicant has no recollection of those events.

Compare that to the applicant who was also claiming psych and internal on a different claim. That applicant lost part of his finger in a midnight bar fight, promptly snorted some cocaine and went to the ER. He was savvy enough to realize that the ER wanted him to detox and refer him to rehab, as it found the mix of drugs and alcohol in his system to be somewhat alarming.

That applicant was aware and present enough to intentionally decline further medical treatment and leave the ER right away. He probably remembers most of those details to this day.

Age of records

Another problem with older applicants is that records of events that happened years ago are often destroyed. For instance, an applicant with five or six DUIs had no recollection of the 1978 DUI crash that led to his incarceration and hospitalization. Obtaining those records had odds of slim to none as well, as subpoenas to the auto insurers, law enforcement agencies and medical centers were fruitless.

Still, it’s worth trying. I recently obtained records of a preexisting, nonindustrial traumatic brain injury from the late 1980s on one case. In a different case, I located a published opinion from a District Court of Appeal of the felony conviction of an applicant with seven different names (thanks, Google!).

Conclusion

Taking a multitiered approach to obtaining subpoenaed records of auto accidents and DUI crashes is definitely worthwhile. The medical experts on a case need to know this information. Otherwise, they will have a woefully inaccurate medical history, which arguably means that their reports are not substantial medical evidence.

John P. Kamin is a workers’ compensation defense attorney and partner at Bradford & Barthel’s Woodland Hills location. He is WorkCompCentral's former legal editor. This entry from Bradford & Barthel's blog appears with permission.