Delaware Attorney Ben Schwartz explains why a viewer was denied confidential information on her Dad’s Personal Injury case.

Hi I am Benjamin Schwartz,

Today we are going to answer a viewer question from Roberta in Georgetown, Delaware. Roberta wrote in and she said, I have got an attorney working on my dad’s case. Dad had a personal injury and I want to get a report from the lawyer, but he would not talk to me about my dad’s case. What is going on with that now,
I have to say that this situation comes up very frequently in my office and in other attorney offices as well. Where we will have a client who maybe the client is a child, and one parent hires us to represent the child. The other parent wants to get some information that is only natural.

Or, we will have cases where an older person might hire us for his case and then the daughter who may be his caretaker wants to get information about what is going on and what you have to understand is something about how lawyers work. Lawyers work under a rule of confidentiality. In every state as far as I am aware in every state in the United States there is rules.

They are rules governing lawyers and how lawyers work and one of the rules is a rule about confidentiality and essentially it says that when a lawyer has information pertaining to representation of a person they can not give that information to third parties and can not give it to other people so if I am representing you know if I am representing a particle person I can not tell you that that is my client. If I am getting information from that client about their case. I can not give you the information about that person’s case.

You might be my client’s mother. You might be my client’s daughter. It does not make any difference unless my client has given me permission to give you information and so the situation comes up left and right it comes up very often where someone you know or a family member or close friend needs to get information about a client’s case, and the family member or a close friend is denied the access to the information and so the fix is to go to the client and get permission to disclose the confidential information to that friend or family member .

I hope that answers the question Roberta I am not sure of the details are in your situation but my advice would be to write a letter to the attorney who has denied you access to your family members information and ask that attorney to contact his client and get permission to give you confidential information. I hope that answers the question. I hope this is informative and entertaining and educational as well.

If you have a question for me about a personal injury case or any type of legal matter, feel free to send me an email. Let me know if it is something you would like me to answer in one of these videos.

Thanks for watching.