## Facts

- Robert V. Prink, a law-firm associate, worked in offices on the 36th floor of 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City.
- On March 1, 1976, he was found dead on a sixth-floor setback; a window in his 36th-floor office was open, and there were no eyewitnesses.
- A deputy chief medical examiner recorded that Prink’s psychiatrist, Dr. Thomas Doyle, reported Prink had been acutely tense and depressed.
- Theresa C. Prink, as administratrix of the estate, brought a wrongful-death action under EPTL § 5-4.1 against the building owner and design professionals.
- The complaint alleged negligent design/installation of a window alcove and desk and negligent maintenance of a window; the theory was that the window was jammed, requiring the decedent to kneel on the desk to open it, causing him to lose balance and fall.
- In discovery, the administratrix acknowledged the decedent had been seeing Dr. Doyle but refused to disclose what the decedent said about why he was seeing the psychiatrist, invoking spousal privilege.
- She also refused to disclose the content of her post-death conversation with Dr. Doyle, asserting an evidentiary privilege on behalf of the decedent.
- Defendants sought disclosure to support an alternative causation theory that the death may have been suicide rather than a fall caused by negligent premises conditions.

## Issues

1. Whether evidentiary privileges (including physician–patient and spousal privilege) can bar disclosure of psychiatric information about a decedent in a wrongful-death action where the unwitnessed death could be consistent with accident or suicide.
2. Whether a decedent’s personal representative may invoke privileges more broadly than the decedent could have invoked had he survived and sued.
3. Whether asserting a wrongful-death theory that depends on accidental causation places the decedent’s mental condition in controversy such that privilege is waived to the extent necessary for fair litigation.

## Decision

- The New York Court of Appeals affirmed the order compelling the administratrix to answer questions concerning the decedent’s mental condition.
- The court held that, because the decedent’s mental condition was directly in issue on the causation question (accident versus suicide), the estate could not rely on privilege to exclude relevant psychiatric evidence.
- The court concluded that the representative’s ability to invoke privilege is coextensive with the decedent’s; because the decedent himself could not have prevented disclosure in analogous litigation, the representative could not do so in a wrongful-death action.
- The compelled disclosure included the administratrix’s post-death conversation with Dr. Doyle about the decedent’s mental state and the decedent’s reasons for consulting the psychiatrist as known to her.
- The ruling was limited to information necessary to litigate the condition placed in controversy rather than a blanket elimination of confidentiality for unrelated matters.

## Legal Principles

- A wrongful-death claim is derivative of the decedent’s rights; the personal representative generally “stands in the shoes” of the decedent for privilege purposes and may not assert a broader privilege than the decedent could have asserted.
- Physician–patient privilege may be deemed waived, or unavailable, when the party seeking to invoke it has affirmatively placed the patient’s mental or physical condition in issue in the litigation.
- A litigant may not use privilege as both a sword and a shield by advancing a theory that requires resolution of a medical/psychiatric condition while withholding evidence that would allow the opposing party to contest causation or culpability.
- Where causation plausibly turns on either defendant negligence or self-inflicted harm, evidence bearing on the decedent’s mental condition may be discoverable to permit a fair adjudication of the competing explanations.

## Conclusion

The court allowed discovery of psychiatric information because the wrongful-death theory made the decedent’s mental condition central to determining whether the death was accidental or suicidal, and the estate could not invoke privilege to block evidence the decedent himself could not have withheld in comparable litigation.


Prink v. Rockefeller Ctr., Inc., 48 N.Y.2d 309, 398 N.E.2d 517 (N.Y. 1979)