What Can a Granite Bay Brain Injury Lawyer Do About a Defense Medical Exam?

Before a lawsuit, you do not have to see the other driver’s insurance doctor. After you sue, California lets the defense demand one physical exam, but a neuropsychological exam needs a court order or your agreement. A Granite Bay brain injury lawyer can narrow the tests, keep the exam within 75 miles, record it, and seek the raw data.

Kreeger Law Firm is a personal injury practice led by Christopher L. Kreeger, who brings 35 years of experience to injury cases across the Sacramento region. The firm handles brain injury claims for people hurt in crashes, falls and other accidents throughout Placer County. Its Roseville office sits at 3300 Douglas Boulevard, Suite 145, on the same road that runs east into Granite Bay. Chris Kreeger is AV Preeminent Rated.

Did an adjuster or defense lawyer ask you to see their doctor after a Granite Bay crash? Call Kreeger Law Firm at (916) 782-8400 for a free consultation before you put anything on the calendar.

Do You Have to See the Insurance Company’s Doctor Before a Lawsuit?

No. The exam rules in Code of Civil Procedure section 2032.020 cover parties in a pending action, so they begin only after a case is filed. Until then, an adjuster’s request that you see a company doctor is just that, a request. If one of these letters is sitting on your counter, Kreeger Law Firm’s traumatic brain injury practice can tell you what it asks for and what it leaves out.

Why ask so early? A defense doctor’s report gives the insurer its own account of your memory, focus and mood, written by someone it chose. Turning down a pre-suit exam carries no legal penalty. The adjuster will still value the claim on the records it has, and how that plays out depends on facts a lawyer needs to review.

What the At-Fault Driver’s Insurer Can Ask For

The other driver’s insurer has no contract with you. It can ask for a recorded statement, a medical records release or an exam, and each one is optional before suit. Watch the date range on any release it sends. A form reaching back ten years hands a future examiner every old headache, concussion and counseling visit in your chart. A recorded statement given while you still struggle to find words can also read like a shifting story later.

When Your Own Auto Policy Requires an Exam

Your own insurer is a different story, because you signed a contract with it. Many auto policies list duties after an accident, and submitting to exams by a doctor the company picks is often one of them. Those duties attach to the coverage you claim under. So the answer turns on your policy wording and on which coverage pays. Refusing an exam the policy requires can hold up payment under that coverage.

Medical Payments Coverage

Medical payments coverage pays crash-related medical bills up to the limit you bought, whoever caused the wreck. Standard policy forms often make that payment conditional on physical exams by physicians the insurer selects, as often as it reasonably requires. Read the “duties after an accident” section of your own policy before you assume either way.

Uninsured and Underinsured Motorist Claims

Uninsured motorist claims run on statute as well as contract. Insurance Code section 11580.2(f) makes the Civil Discovery Act, exam rules included, available to you and your insurer at any time after the accident. Under section 11580.2(o), if you skip an exam the insurer arranged within 20 days of asking, it can demand another before arbitration. Ignore that one too, and the arbitration is stayed until at least 30 days after you comply.

The One Physical Exam the Defense Can Demand After You Sue

Once a Granite Bay case is filed, the rules shift. Under Code of Civil Procedure section 2032.220, any defendant in a personal injury case may demand one physical examination without asking a judge. The exam cannot include a test that is painful, protracted or intrusive. It has to happen within 75 miles of your home, on a date at least 30 days after the demand is served.

One means one. A second physical exam, or any mental exam, needs a court order under section 2032.310. A neurologist’s exam often includes a short check of memory and orientation. A full battery of memory, attention and reasoning tests is a mental examination, and the demand route does not reach it.

What the Demand Must Spell Out

A valid demand is specific, so you know exactly what you are agreeing to. Section 2032.220(c) requires every demand to state these things.

• The date, time and address where the exam will take place.
• The manner, conditions, scope and nature of what the doctor will do.
• The examiner’s name and medical specialty, if the examiner has one.

Anything outside that description is outside the demand. If the doctor starts an unlisted test, section 2032.510 lets your lawyer’s observer suspend the exam so that a judge can sort it out.

You Have 20 Days to Answer It

Section 2032.230 gives you 20 days after service to respond in writing. You can agree to the exam as written, agree with your own changes, or refuse and explain why. Miss that window and section 2032.240(a) treats every objection as waived, unless a court later finds mistake or excusable neglect. Ignore a court order compelling the exam, and the judge can impose issue, evidence or terminating sanctions.

Why a Neuropsychological Exam Needs a Court Order in California

Most brain injury cases draw a request for neuropsychological testing. That is a mental examination, and Code of Civil Procedure section 2032.310 requires the defense to get leave of court unless you agree to it. The motion needs a declaration showing the lawyers tried to work out the terms first.

Plenty of cases settle the terms by written stipulation instead. Whether a court orders the exam, and on what conditions, rests on the injuries you claim and the record your lawyer builds. The testing itself is covered in our post on proving a brain injury when the CT scan is normal.

What the Order Has to Name

Section 2032.320(d) requires an order granting the exam to specify who may perform it. It must also set the time, place, manner, conditions, scope and nature of the exam, along with the diagnostic tests and procedures allowed. That list carries real weight in a brain case. A neuropsychological battery can include many separate tests, and the order is where you find out which ones.

Who Is Allowed to Examine You

Not every doctor qualifies. Section 2032.020(c)(1) limits mental examinations to a licensed physician or a licensed clinical psychologist. The psychologist must hold a doctoral degree and have at least five years of postgraduate experience diagnosing emotional and mental disorders. Check the examiner’s credentials against that standard before the exam date.

The 75-Mile Line From a Granite Bay Home

Distance gets its own rule. Under section 2032.320(e), a court can order an exam more than 75 miles from your home only for good cause. The order must also require the defense to advance your reasonable travel costs. An office in Sacramento, Roseville or Davis sits well inside that radius. One in San Francisco or Oakland does not.

Good Cause and the Emotional Distress Stipulation

Section 2032.320(a) allows a court-ordered exam only for good cause. In Vinson v. Superior Court (1987) 43 Cal.3d 833, the California Supreme Court held that a plaintiff who claims mental and emotional harm puts that condition in controversy. Section 2032.320(b) and (c) let you head off the exam by stipulating that you claim no unusual distress and will call no expert on it. That stipulation is a poor fit for most brain injury cases, because memory loss and slowed thinking are the injury itself.

How Placer County Superior Court Hears the Motion

A lawsuit over a Granite Bay crash is normally filed in Placer County Superior Court. The court assigns civil case management conferences by the last digit of the case number. They go to Departments 1 and 3 at the Historic Courthouse, 101 Maple Street in Auburn, or Department 32 at the Hon. Howard G. Gibson Courthouse, 10820 Justice Center Drive in Roseville. Exam motions are heard on the civil law and motion calendar. Tentative rulings post at noon the day before, and under Local Rule 20.2.3 the tentative becomes final unless someone requests oral argument by 4 p.m. that day.

Recording the Exam and Getting the Raw Test Data

What happens behind the exam room door? California gives you a way to find out, though the rules differ by exam type. The examiner writes down what you said, and that history opens the report.

Memory trouble makes that history hard to check later. You may not recall which questions came up or how you answered them. A recording settles it, and a good exam order or stipulation usually covers these terms.

• The exact list of tests the examiner may give.
• Audio recording of the interview, the instructions and the testing.
• A start time, a time limit and scheduled breaks.
• Delivery of the recording and raw data to your side under a protective order.

None of these terms appears automatically. Each one is negotiated or argued case by case.

An Observer Can Sit In on a Physical Exam

Section 2032.510(a) lets your attorney, or a representative the attorney authorizes in writing, attend any physical exam. The observer may record every word spoken to or by you. The observer cannot take part or disrupt the exam. If the examiner turns abusive or starts unauthorized tests, the observer may suspend the exam so that your side can seek a protective order.

A Mental Exam Can Be Recorded but Usually Not Watched

Section 2032.530(a) gives both the examiner and the examinee the right to audio record a mental examination. Subdivision (b) leaves earlier case law on attorney presence in place. In Vinson, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that a lawyer’s presence is not required during a mental exam. Trial courts can still allow counsel or order other safeguards when a case calls for them.

What Randy’s Trucking Decided in 2023

The leading case on recordings and test data is Randy’s Trucking, Inc. v. Superior Court (2023) 91 Cal.App.5th 818, a published decision from the Fifth Appellate District. The trial court there granted a neuropsychological exam under section 2032.310. It barred video and third-party observers, then set two conditions. You can read the reasoning in the Court of Appeal’s published opinion, which denied the defense challenge.

A Copy of the Audio Recording

The trial court ordered the examiner’s office to audio record the exam and send a copy to the plaintiff’s lawyer. The Court of Appeal upheld that. Section 2032.530 gives the examinee a right to record, and the court read that right to imply the examinee may keep a copy.

Raw Test Data Under a Protective Order

The order also sent the report and all raw data to the plaintiff’s lawyer within 30 days. No statute expressly allows or bars that disclosure, so the court found it within the judge’s discretion. A protective order limited use to that case, required security and confidentiality, and called for destruction when the case ended.

Why Some Examiners Refuse These Terms

Neuropsychologists guard their test materials closely. In Randy’s Trucking, the chosen examiner withdrew, and two others declined to work under the order. The court found two refusals too few to show a refusal across the field. It left the defense free to ask again for expert-only delivery of the data. Plaintiff lawyers writing in Advocate magazine in 2025 reported that trial courts have wavered since, so what a judge orders comes down to the record in that case.

The Defense Report and the Privilege You Trade for It

After the exam, section 2032.610 lets you demand the examiner’s written report. The defense must deliver it within 30 days after your demand, or within 15 days of trial, whichever comes first. The report has to cover these items.

• The history the examiner took from you.
• Every examination performed and its findings, including the results of all tests.
• The examiner’s diagnoses, prognoses and conclusions.
• Copies of earlier reports on the same condition by that examiner or any other.

Under section 2032.630, demanding and getting that report waives privilege for every doctor who has examined you for the same condition, or who will. Your own neuropsychologist’s notes and reports come into play. When to make that demand is a judgment call, and the right timing hinges on what your own experts have found.

How a Granite Bay Brain Injury Lawyer Prepares Your Records for the Exam

The examiner reads your file before meeting you. In a Granite Bay case, that file usually starts with the crash report and the trauma chart. Gaps in either one become the defense’s first questions. Expect the examiner to ask for most of these records.

• The ambulance run report with the crew’s first observations.
• Emergency department and trauma notes, including any confusion or memory gap recorded.
• Records of earlier head injuries, headaches or counseling.
• School and employment records showing how you functioned before the crash.

Pulling these first lets your side see what the examiner will see. Accounts from people who knew you before matter too, because witnesses in California brain injury cases often describe changes no test captures.

The CHP Auburn Area Collision Report

Granite Bay is an unincorporated community, so city police do not write most crash reports there. The California Highway Patrol’s Auburn Area office handles traffic collision investigations in the unincorporated areas of Placer County. That covers wrecks on Auburn-Folsom Road and the Granite Bay stretch of Douglas Boulevard. A crash a few miles west, inside Roseville city limits, draws the Roseville Police Department instead.

Trauma Records From Sutter Roseville Medical Center

A seriously hurt Granite Bay driver may be taken to Sutter Roseville Medical Center. The California Emergency Medical Services Authority lists it as a Level II trauma center, with UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento at Level I. The first-hour notes record confusion, vomiting and memory gaps before anyone has a reason to dispute them. A defense examiner compares those notes against what you report months later.

Questions About Insurance Medical Exams After a Granite Bay Brain Injury

These come up in nearly every brain injury case once the defense asks for an exam. The answers below state the general California rules. How each one applies to you varies with your injuries, your policy and the stage of your case. Bring any letter or demand you received to the consultation so that the answer fits your paperwork.

Can I Bring Someone With Me to a Neuropsychological Exam?

Usually not into the room. California case law does not require a lawyer’s presence during a mental exam, though a judge can allow one. You can audio record the exam under section 2032.530, and your lawyer can push for a copy of the examiner’s recording.

Is an Independent Medical Exam Really Independent?

Insurers call it an IME, but the defense picks the examiner and the demand or order names that person. The report goes into the defense file and often shapes settlement talks. Your own treating doctors and experts can answer it.

Can the Examiner Ask About Old Concussions?

Often yes, because prior head injuries bear on the condition you put in controversy. The order sets the scope, and Vinson held that a lawsuit does not open every private part of your life. Questions far outside the injury claimed are fair ground for an objection.

Does a Brain Injury Pause California’s Two-Year Deadline?

Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1 gives two years to sue. Section 352 pauses that clock for someone who lacked the legal capacity to make decisions when the injury happened, for as long as that lasts. It does not reach claims against a public entity, though Government Code section 911.6 allows some late claims after incapacity. Our page on how long you have to file a California brain injury case covers the basics.

Call a Granite Bay Brain Injury Lawyer When the Exam Notice Arrives

A demand for a physical exam starts a 20-day clock. In Placer County, a tentative ruling on an exam motion becomes final unless someone asks for argument by 4 p.m. the day before the hearing. Neither one waits for you to find a lawyer, so the best time to call a Granite Bay brain injury lawyer is the day the paperwork shows up.

Kreeger Law Firm can review the demand, the proposed tests, the examiner’s credentials and the distance from your home. It can then press for recording, breaks and access to the raw data. Chris Kreeger has spent 35 years on injury cases, and the firm’s published case results show the claims it takes on. No lawyer can promise how a court will rule, and every exam dispute has its own facts.

Call Kreeger Law Firm at (916) 782-8400 for a free consultation about your brain injury claim. You can also send the details through the firm’s contact page, and the office can follow up about your exam date.