Montana: Supreme Court Says State’s IME Process Does Not Violate Due Process

Mont. Code Ann. § 39-71-605, which permits workers’ compensation insurers to obtain multiple medical examinations of a claimant, does not permit the State Fund (which had insured the risk and was administering the claim in the instant case) to act in contravention to the rights of privacy, substantive due process, and against unreasonable searches embodied in the Montana Constitution, held the Supreme Court of Montana. Stressing that the statute provided parameters on the IME process, the IME process was clearly related to the government's concern for effectively administering the workers' compensation process and was reasonably related to the legitimate government objective of promoting efficiency and self-reliance in the workers' compensation process, the Court held the IME process did not undermine a claimant's rights in his or her medical information. Moreover, the IME was obtained pursuant to a claimant's waiver of confidentiality for purposes of the administration of her claim.

Thomas A. Robinson, J.D., the Feature National Columnist for the LexisNexis Workers’ Compensation eNewsletter, is co-author of Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law (LexisNexis).

LexisNexis Online Subscribers: Citations below link to Lexis Advance.

See Robinson v. State Comp. Mut. Ins. Fund, 2018 MT 259, 2018 Mont. LEXIS 359 (Oct. 23, 2018)

See generally Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, § 94.02.

Source: Larson’s Workers’ Compensation Law, the nation’s leading authority on workers’ compensation law