Minor driver has MVA. Passenger killed. D taken to pediatric hospital. ER does a blood draw for treatment. As a matter of course, they do not run toxicology on kids. They still have blood sample. We have strong suspicion that ETOH is involved. I'm trying to figure out how to: 1) compel hospital to test (only done on doc's orders); 2) get possession of blood to do our own testing (in a way that will allow results to come in at trial). Any ideas?

Grand jury subpoena should be sufficient to recover sample. Then have DPS test it.

You could ask hospital to test it and offer to reimburse them for the cost, but you can't force them to test the blood.

Our police officer's use a search warrant to obtain the hospital drawn sample and then we have it tested in one of our local forensic labs.

A search warrant is the safer way to go. However, given the comparable type of private information in a medical record and the acceptance of a subpoena for those records, I would be surprised if a subpoena was insufficient for a blood sample.

[This message was edited by JB on 12-31-08 at .]