Cerulli v South Western Sydney Local Health District [2022] NSWSC 210 (on CaseLaw).
This interlocutory decision concerns interrogatories in circumstances where the plaintiffs had foreshadowed suspicions about the authenticity of defendant’s medical records. The court was required to consider whether the plaintiffs’ concerns should be particularised before requiring the defendant to answer interrogatories on that issue.
The plaintiffs foreshadowed that they proposed to obtain the opinion of an expert forensic document examiner to support their suspicions. The plaintiffs contended that they should be provided with the defendant’s answers to the interrogatories before that occurs in order that their expert can take those answers into account in expressing his or her view on the authenticity of the medical entries.
Harrison J held at [8]:
Without wishing to make allegations that may be without substance, the plaintiffs have sought to interrogate the defendant on the limited issue of the accuracy of its medical records. They wish to instruct their expert medical examiner with the benefit of that more detailed information before finalising their position concerning the documents. Even assuming that the expert in due course were to express a doubt about the authenticity or reliability of the medical records, that would not appear to me to be something that would necessarily generate the need further to amend the statement of claim so as to plead fraud or indeed to amend it for any reason at all.
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