Rush Limbaugh's Attorney Asks the Florida Supreme Court to Order Mr. Limbaugh's Medical Records Returned to His Doctors

Rush Limbaugh's Attorney Asks the Florida Supreme Court to Order Mr. Limbaugh's Medical Records Returned to His Doctors MIAMI, Jan. 20 /PRNewswire/ -- Prosecutors flouted Florida's medical privacy laws when they seized Rush Limbaugh's medical records, and the records should be returned to his doctors and permanently suppressed as a remedy, Mr. Limbaugh's attorney, Roy Black, argued in a brief submitted today to the Florida Supreme Court. The radio host's medical records were seized by Palm Beach County prosecutors more than a year ago. The Florida Supreme Court will now review the case, which many say has implications for the medical privacy of all Florida medical patients. Prosecutors have said they are investigating whether Mr. Limbaugh "doctor shopped" when he obtained prescriptions for pain killers from four doctors between May and September 2003. Mr. Limbaugh has not been charged with anything, and Mr. Black has argued that prosecutors used search warrants to go on a fishing expedition without regard to Florida's strict medical privacy statutes. The state has admitted in court that it won't know "what it can charge, if anything," unless it can review all of Mr. Limbaugh's medical records. "The state Legislature spoke clearly when it passed these medical privacy laws, saying that medical records are in a special category and cannot be disclosed except by subpoena, proper notice to the patient and a pre-seizure hearing," Mr. Black said. "The state has acknowledged that as a matter of strategy it made no good faith effort to comply with these requirements," he added. "They have admitted that they intentionally chose to bypass the notice and hearing requirements so they could leaf through all of his medical records looking for something to charge. Suppression of the records is the only fair remedy." The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has joined the case on Mr. Limbaugh's side, saying it has entered the fray "to protect people against unnecessary government intrusion into their medical records." "Rush Limbaugh's celebrity status is secondary to the fundamental privacy issues that arise in this case," ACLU of Florida Legal Director Randall Marshall in a recent statement. Mr. Black's brief asks the Florida Supreme Court to overturn a 2-1 decision by a three-judge panel of Florida's Fourth District Court of Appeal, which ruled October 6, 2004 that the state's medical privacy laws don't apply to search warrants. Mr. Black's brief cited prior decisions by the Florida Supreme Court and Florida's Third District and Fifth District courts of appeal where justices ruled that Florida can create higher privacy standards for medical records and impose higher search and seizure standards on law enforcement than those in the federal Fourth Amendment and the Florida Constitution. Even the Fourth District Court of Appeal itself recognized these greater protections in its State v. Langsford (2002) decision where it said that the Florida Constitution "does not prohibit the legislature from passing statutes which give Florida citizens greater protections than the Fourth Amendment," Mr. Black argued. For a copy of Mr. Black's January 20 brief in the Limbaugh case, visit http://royblack.com/ and click the "Rush Limbaugh" link, or visit http://rushlimbaugh.com/. Source: Roy Black CONTACT: Tony Knight or Tammy Taylor, both of Sitrick And Company, +1-310-788-2850, for Roy Black Web site: http://rushlimbaugh.com/ http://royblack.com/ ------- Profile: International Entertainment