Davies v. Superior Court

• Decision Date: 02 July 1984
• Docket Number: S.F. 24625
• Citation: 36 Cal.3d 291,204 Cal.Rptr. 154,682 P.2d 349
• Court: California Supreme Court
• Parties: , 682 P.2d 349 Fred James DAVIES, Petitioner, v. The SUPERIOR COURT of Tulare County, Respondent; The STATE of California, Real Party in Interest.

Page 154

204 Cal.Rptr. 154

36 Cal.3d 291, 682 P.2d 349

Fred James DAVIES, Petitioner, v. The SUPERIOR COURT of Tulare County, Respondent;

The STATE of California, Real Party in Interest.

S.F. 24625.

Supreme Court of California,

In Bank.

July 2, 1984.

Richard C. Watters and Miles, Sears & Eanni, Fresno, for petitioner.

No appearance for respondent.

Robert F. Carlson, Chief Counsel, Dept. of Transp., Ronald I. Harrison, George L. Cory and Richard A. Wehe, Sacramento, for real party in interest.

GRODIN, Justice.

Petitioner, the plaintiff in an action seeking damages for personal injuries suffered in a single vehicle tractor-trailer accident, sought a writ of mandate to compel the respondent superior court to order real party in interest State of California (State) to answer interrogatories and produce documents containing information about other accidents at the same location. The State had refused a request for production, and had declined to answer two interrogatories, asserting that the information sought was compiled from accident reports made confidential, and thus not subject to discovery, by Vehicle Code sections 20012 and 20014. ¹ This court issued an alternative writ, with which the superior court and the State have since complied. Although the proceeding was thereby rendered moot the question presented has statewide importance and is of a recurring nature. We have, therefore, exercised our discretion to retain the matter and decide this question. (Green v. Superior Court (1974) 10 Cal.3d 616, 111 Cal.Rptr. 704, 517 P.2d 1168; Liberty Mut. Ins. Co. v. Fales (1973) 8 Cal.3d 712, 106 Cal.Rptr. 21, 505 P.2d 213.) We shall conclude that information about other accidents which discloses neither the identity of the reporting party nor identifying material, although generated from accident reports, is not made confidential by sections 20012 and 20014. We shall also conclude that this information is subject to discovery because it is related to the subject matter of a lawsuit arising out of an accident on a public highway and may lead to discovery of admissible evidence.

I

Petitioner's cause of action against the State is based upon a claim that the state highway on which the accident occurred was designed, built, and maintained in a defective and dangerous condition of which the State had notice. During the course of discovery he served interrogatories and a request for production of documents on the State pursuant to Code of Civil Procedure sections 2030 and 2031. ² The interrogatories included questions about prior accidents occurring at the location of that involving petitioner, asking for the dates, type of accident, parties involved, whether litigation against the State had followed, and whether the accidents had been recorded in the TASAS computer. ³ Petitioner's second request for production of documents, that in issue here, sought collision diagrams prepared in conjunction with investigations of accidents occurring at that location and traffic collision reports of accidents occurring subsequent to his. ⁴

The State had refused to produce either type of document or to answer the interrogatories requesting information regarding the prior accidents, asserting in each instance that the Legislature had mandated that California Highway Patrol reports be confidential, and with respect to the diagrams that this mandate encompassed information generated from those reports. The State opposed the motions for an order compelling production and for further response to the interrogatories asserting that sections 20012 and 20014, ⁵ as interpreted by the Court of Appeal in State of California ex rel. Department of Transportation v. Superior Court (Thomsen) (1980) 102 Cal.App.3d 25, 162 Cal.Rptr. 78; Edgar v. Superior Court (1978) 84 Cal.App.3d 430, 148 Cal.Rptr. 687; and People ex rel. Dept. of Transportation v. Superior Court (Clark) (1976) 60 Cal.App.3d 352, 131 Cal.Rptr. 476, preclude discovery of accident reports ⁶ and of information contained in or generated from those reports.

The superior court denied both motions, ruling that the matters sought to be discovered were privileged and not discoverable.

II

Section 20012 provides that accident reports "shall be for the confidential use of the Department of Motor Vehicles and the Department of the California Highway Patrol, except that the ... Highway Patrol or the law enforcement agency to whom the accident was reported shall disclose the entire contents of the reports ... to any person who may have a proper interest therein ...." Construing this section as creating a privilege which the State could assert against discovery by any person other than one who might incur liability arising out of the accident which was the subject of the report sought, the Court of Appeal in People ex rel. Dept. of Transportation v. Superior Court (Clark), supra, 60 Cal.App.3d 352, 131 Cal.Rptr. 476, held that a litigant could not obtain access to reports of other accidents. The court did not then foreclose discovery of information about those accidents however. To the contrary, it suggested that the plaintiff was not "precluded from procuring the desired information by other means," including interrogatories directed to the Department of Transportation. (Id., at p. 360, 131 Cal.Rptr. 476.)

When another litigant subsequently sought discovery of information about other accidents at the scene of his own by serving such interrogatories on the department, the State refused to answer the interrogatories on grounds that the information it had was obtained from the reports whose confidentiality was confirmed in Clark. This time the Court of Appeal responded by disavowing its dictum in Clark which it stated was "necessarily limited" to discovery only of the fact that prior accidents had occurred at the same location. In explanation the court said that the plaintiff could not "have access indirectly to that which is not available directly." (Edgar v. Superior Court, supra, 84 Cal.App.3d 430, 435, 148 Cal.Rptr. 687.) Acknowledging the right to discover the fact of other accidents, the court reasoned that the "confidential privilege provided is not intended to protect the State from its responsibilities, including its duty to acknowledge the fact of prior occurrences, but is to protect and keep inviolate the identity of the persons involved in the accident, the witnesses and investigating officers, as well as the details contained in the report." (Id., at p. 435, 148 Cal.Rptr. 687.)

More recently, in State of California ex rel. Department of Transportation v. Superior Court (Thomsen), supra, 102 Cal.App.3d 25, 162 Cal.Rptr. 78, the plaintiff in the underlying litigation had sought the TASAS printouts requested by petitioner here. In addition, he sought, and the superior court ordered production of "[d]ocuments of prior accidents" prepared by the California Highway Patrol, and any other documents relating to accidents at the specified location in the possession of the Department of Transportation. The trial court had provided that the names of individuals involved could be deleted from any accident reports that might be produced in compliance with the order. The Court of Appeal granted the department's petition for writ of mandate and directed the superior court to vacate that order. In so doing the court noted the purpose of section 20012 "to encourage parties and witnesses to report accidents completely and truthfully" (Fernandez v. DiSalvo Appliance Co. (1960) 179 Cal.App.2d 240, 245, 3 Cal.Rptr. 609), and speculated that a further purpose may have been to protect the privacy of persons involved. Then, after reviewing Clark and Edgar, the court agreed that the accident reports are "privileged" and that plaintiff was not entitled to discovery of the accident reports because he was not a person subject to liability and thus did not have a "proper interest" in the records themselves within the meaning of section 20012. Accepting the reasoning that the source of the TASAS data was "privileged," the court also concluded that the TASAS data were not discoverable.

Neither the language of section 20012, nor its purpose of encouraging truthful and complete accident reports, supports the conclusion that the confidentiality that attaches to accident reports extends to the data in the TASAS retrieval system. Before addressing the legislative intent and proper interpretation of section 20012, however, it is appropriate also to explain that neither this statute nor section 20013 creates a "privilege" as that term is used in the Evidence Code (see Evid.Code, § 911 et seq.) and in the discovery statutes. Sections 20012 and 20014 term accident reports "confidential," while section 20013 provides that they may not be introduced as evidence in any trial. The exclusion of accident reports from evidence is quite narrow, however, applying only to statutorily "required" accident reports, those to be made by a driver, passenger, or witness to an accident, and to statements contained in those reports. (Dwelly v. McReynolds, supra, 6 Cal.2d 128, 56 P.2d 1232.) Although termed a "privilege" in some opinions, the confidentiality created by these statutes does not authorize the reporting party to control release of the reports or information contained therein. The State is authorized to disclose the "entire contents" of the reports to the persons particularly described in section 20012 and to any other person having a "proper interest" therein. The State, not the reporting party, determines who those persons may be. The statute does not create a privilege in the reporting party to refuse to be a witness or to disclose information about the accident, and it does not create a privilege to preclude discovery by a person having a "proper interest" in the contents of the report. The express disclosure authorization of section 20012, and the limited exclusion from evidence created by section 20013,...