The Washington Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on October 1, 2026 that Virginia Mason Medical Center violated state law when its defense counsel privately interviewed three of plaintiff Michael Snyder’s former treating physicians, without his knowledge or consent and outside formal discovery (Snyder v. Virginia Mason Medical Center, opinion at courts.wa.gov). Snyder’s aorta was punctured during a 2018 dialysis catheter placement, leaving him permanently disabled. The hospital argued a quality-improvement privilege covered the contacts; the court rejected that defense because Virginia Mason failed to properly screen a committee member from the litigation (Law360, October 2026).
The court did not order an automatic default judgment. It remanded for an in-camera review and a remedy hearing, and it held that Snyder does not need to prove litigation prejudice just to obtain a remedy for the violation, though the degree of prejudice shown will still shape which sanction the trial court orders.
Who it affects
Every self-insured Washington hospital and health system defending an open malpractice claim, along with the hospital captives and single-parent structures that front or reinsure that layer. The ruling applies most directly where defense counsel or risk management had any informal contact with a plaintiff’s treating physician before the opinion issued; those files are now open to a sanctions motion under a lower bar than before.
The reserve mechanism
This is an allocated loss adjustment expense (ALAE) severity and development pattern problem, not a frequency or indemnity severity one. Washington’s existing bar on ex parte contact with a plaintiff’s nonparty treating physicians already required consent or formal discovery; this ruling removes the prejudice threshold that made the bar easy to work around in practice. Defense counsel now has a clear incentive to skip informal interviews altogether and go straight to noticed depositions, which cost more per physician and take longer to schedule than a phone call. That shift lengthens the investigation phase of every open Washington malpractice file, which pushes out the point at which defense counsel can size the case and stretches ALAE development further along the tail than a triangle built on pre-ruling claims would predict. Files with any prior informal contact carry an added tail risk: a sanctions motion that front-loads cost into a file that was otherwise tracking toward a quieter resolution.
What this means for your next review
Flag every open Washington malpractice claim for a file-level check: did defense counsel or risk management have any informal, non-deposition contact with a treating physician, and does the case reserve’s ALAE component already assume formal deposition costs rather than the cheaper informal-interview workflow this ruling forecloses. If the reserving actuary’s ALAE development factors on the hospital liability triangle were built on claims that used informal contact, ask whether those factors still apply going forward, or whether a step change in defense-cost severity needs to be reflected in the next review. See the Learn guide to case reserve strengthening and the Hospital and Health System Professional Liability IBNR guide for how a cost-driver shift like this should move case reserves ahead of the IBNR provision catching up.
This follows a quarter of eight-figure hospital verdicts in Minnesota and Connecticut (see our coverage of the Fairview $84 million verdict and Yale New Haven’s three verdicts); Washington’s discovery ruling adds a defense-cost lever to that severity pressure, and plaintiffs’ firms in other states are likely to cite it as a model given how far it reaches without requiring proof of harm.
Sources
- Washington Supreme Court, Snyder v. Virginia Mason Medical Center, opinion, October 1, 2026: https://www.courts.wa.gov/opinions/pdf/1041365.pdf
- Law360, “Hospital Can’t Privately Contact Ex-Docs, Wash. Justices Rule,” October 2026: https://www.law360.com/legalethics/articles/2532935
- Justia, Snyder v. Virginia Mason Med. Ctr. case summary: https://law.justia.com/cases/washington/supreme-court/2026/104-136-5.html