Did Dr. Needles waive his 5th Amendment right to self-incrimination in the civil suit over his clinic's [alleged] infecting potentially thousands of patients with Hep-C?Plaintiff's attorneys say yes. The Las Vegas Sun reports:
Attorneys for Dr. "Needles" Desai contend the doctor did not waive his Fifth Amendment right in the affidavit. The argument is now before District Judge Allan Earl.Last month, Will Kemp, one of the lawyers for plaintiffs, filed court papers suggesting Desai waived his Fifth Amendment privilege when he submitted a three-sentence affidavit May 19 in the case. In the affidavit, Desai acknowledged he is the managing member of the Endoscopy Center and part of a committee that hired Quality Care Consultants, a politically connected medical inspection company, to conduct an audit of the clinic.
Getting a copy of the audit is important to the plaintiffs’ efforts to establish a direct link between the Endoscopy Center and the hepatitis outbreak. So far, Desai and company have stonewalled those efforts.
“We’ve had to fight for every bit of information,” complained Ed Bernstein, another attorney for plaintiffs.
Meanwhile, in other Endoscopy news:
The state medical board's Investigations Division responded to complaints that it was interfering with investigations of Endoscopy and Dr. "Needles" Desai. The letter states the Investigations Division is " vigorously, urgently and professionally pursuing its investigation ... following every lead, interviewing every witness that will talk to them and cooperating fully with law enforcement." (Review-Journal)
I'm not following. How does that affidavit waive his fifth ammendment right?
ReplyDeleteAgreed. Seems pretty weak. Dr. Needles might be able to remain silent on the stand.
ReplyDeleteIf you give testimony under oath (which is what an affidavit is) then you waive your 5th amendment rights as to that information. i.e. you can't admit you did something and then when asked to testify whether you did that thing, refuse to do so based on your 5th amendment rights. You shouldn't be required to further elaborate on it though if it will dig your hole deeper. So theoretically if he provided, in a sworn affidavit, that he paid to have an audit done, he should not be able to invoke his 5th amendment rights to refuse to acknowledge the existence of the audit report which would be the natural result of the audit. It sounds like he might be refusing to acknowledge the existence of the audit report because he is claiming he has a 5th amendment right not to be compelled to testify against himself, and if the audit says what we all know it is going to say, then it would definitely go against him. They're not claiming it's privileged as attorney work product, so it would seem that this audit report should be just another document discoverable by the plaintiffs attorneys.
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