SAN DIEGO (Legal Newsline) – Lawyers upset with photocopy fees won’t be happy with a ruling from a California appeals court.
The Fourth Appellate District affirmed a trial court decision in favor of BACTES Imaging Solutions on Jan. 19. The company communicates with health care entities to provide copies of patients’ medical records needed by their lawyers.
Plaintiff Spencer Busby and attorney Robert Waller sought to represent a class of nearly 9,700 lawyers. They said the photocopy fees exceeded rates health care providers are allowed to charge attorneys.
But BACTES acted as an agent of the lawyers who hired it when making the photocopies, the court ruled. BACTES was only an agent of the health care provider when it responded to requests for medical records.
Busby, a personal injury lawyer, filed his lawsuit in 2014.
“In factual findings that are unchallenged on appeal, the (trial) court found the agreements between BACTES and the health care providers merely required BACTES to respond to section 1158 requests, not to photocopy patient records or provide photocopies of such records to attorneys,” Justice Judith McConnell ruled.
“BACTES fulfilled its contractual obligations by sending cover letters to attorneys notifying them that BACTES was in receipt of their section 1158 requests and that they had several ways to obtain their clients’ records—including by visiting the health care providers and inspecting the records.”
BACTES’s contracts with health care providers did not mention making photocopies on behalf of them, but BACTES’s contracts with attorneys did.
“Therefore, BACTES’s practice of photocopying records and delivering them to the attorneys fell squarely within the scope of the defined agency relationships that existed between BACTES (the agent) and the attorneys (the principals),” McConnell wrote.