Law Technology

Once You Have the Answer You Want. Leave it Alone.

Some excellent advice from Evan Schaeffer at the Illinois Trial Practice Blog:

Once you get good testimony at a deposition, you're best to leave the testimony alone. Take the good answer from the witness and move on.

It seems like obvious advice, but some lawyers can't wait to read the good answer in the printed transcript. Perhaps not believing their good fortune, or perhaps wanting to relive the excitement of the five minutes when everything was going their way, they return to the question again a little later in the deposition. They ask the question to which they got a good answer a second time.

Why give the witness a chance to change or explain his answer? I can think of only a couple of reasons, neither of them very good: (1) You're not sure whether you've pinned the witness down or (2) you can't remember what the witness said.

I have to say that I’ve seen this more than once. When you get good testimony, don’t give the witness a chance to rehabilitate himself.

For more information on depositions, check out Evan’s excellent book: Deposition Checklists & Strategies.

Full post as published by South Carolina Trial Law Blog on April 13, 2008 (boomark / email).