A Florida court has ruled against defendants in an auto negligence suit who'd sought to prevent their attorney from complying with interrogatory requests in an appeal that hinged on work-product privilege.

The Third District Court of Appeal Wednesday denied Jose Raul Angeles-Delgado and Jessica Carillo's petition to quash a lower court order in the lawsuit against them by plaintiff Julio Costa Benitez.

Benitez had asked the defendants to produce information concerning the financial relationship between their insurance company, Allstate, their attorney Kansas Gooden, and the experts that had been called to testify in the case.

Gooden, a Miami-based lawyer with the Boyd & Jenerette law firm, did not immediately return requests for comment by press time.

Benitez had asked the parties to deliver "all documents that mention, refer, or relate to the amount of fees that defendant, defendant's insurance carrier, and/or defendant's lawyers have paid each expert … in the last three years." The plaintiff also asked for documentation of "cases in which each expert … has performed analysis and rendered opinions for defendant nationally" in the previous three years.

Angeles-Delgado and Carillo appealed to the Third DCA, after Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Mavel Ruiz denied their request for a protective order. Their petition for writ of certiorari asked the appellate court to quash the order, reiterating the motion's argument that "any disclosure would be unduly burdensome, prejudicial, and result in irreparable harm."

The appellate court found, "The discovery requests were directed to defendants, but sought information in the possession of their experts, lawyers, and insurer, who were not named as defendants in the action."

Read the opinion:

The appellate panel concluded the defendants did not sufficiently establish that the lower court had departed from the essential requirements of the law. The opinion disagreed with the assertion that a prior case, Worley v. Central Florida Young Men's Christian Association, forbade Angeles-Delgado and Carillo's legal counsel and insurance company — parties who weren't named as defendants in the litigation — from being compelled to share information with the court.

"Worley holds only that the attorney-client privilege bars compelled disclosure of whether the plaintiff's lawyer referred the plaintiff to a treating physician," the opinion said. "On these facts, Worley is inapposite."

The Third DCA ruled even if a law firm is not a defendant in a case, it can still be ordered to disclose a "financial relationship with experts retained for purposes of litigation as a question of great public importance."

The plaintiff's appellate attorney, Miami-Dade litigator Philip D. Parrish, did not respond to press inquiries by deadline.

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