Dibble v. Penn State Geisinger Clinic, Inc.

Denial of defendants' motion for a confidentiality order concerning discovery materials produced during lawsuit reversed; materials contained confidential information in the nature of trade secrets, and court erred in denying defendants' request for an order preventing plaintiff from disseminating information to individuals not involved in underlying litigation.

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� 1 This is an appeal from the denial of a motion for a confidentiality order presented by defendants, the Geisinger Health Plan HMO and certain of its participating health care providers, which sought to prevent plaintiff from disclosing, disseminating and/or otherwise publishing numerous pages of documents that the defendants produced during discovery conducted in an underlying medical malpractice action. The documents pertained to the HMO’s managed care procedures, and included, inter alia, information regarding individual physicians’ compensation, HMO salary/bonus incentive procedures as well as policies regarding the hiring and retention of plan physicians. After producing the documents, defendants sought plaintiff’s agreement to keep the information confidential. Plaintiff’s counsel declined to execute the proposed confidentiality agreement. Rather, he stated his intention was to use the information produced in the instant lawsuit to support his firm’s prosecution of several unrelated lawsuits against the HMO and to exchange the information produced with outside attorneys and law firms engaged in unrelated actions against the HMO. Thus, in late August of 2000, defendants sought a confidentiality order from the trial court, in part on the grounds that the records produced included proprietary trade secrets and that the documents contained information entitled to protection under a constitutional right to privacy. On January 3, 2001, as part of a “general housekeeping order” to dispose of “various outstanding issues in this involved and complex litigation” the trial court summarily denied, among other things, “Defendants Petition for an Order of Confidentiality.” Defendants now appeal the order denying relief as separable from and collateral to the main cause of action pursuant to Pa.R.A.P. 313 and allege that the trial court erred in denying the petition. *fn1 We agree and accordingly,

we reverse.

� 2 The facts, as gleaned from the record, show that in 1987, plaintiff husband, Charles Dibble, became eligible for Medicare. In 1990, he purchased a “Medicare wrap around” supplemental health insurance plan from appellant Geisinger Health Plan. The HMO coverage was a supplement to the traditional Medicare “fee for service” plan which was the primary payor for Mr. Dibble’s health care treatment.

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