Personal Injury Law

Deposition Question That a Lawyer Should Not Ask

John Bratt has a Baltimore Injury Lawyer Blog post about a defense lawyer asking a question in an auto accident case for the sole purpose of embarrassing a witness. The question had no relevance to the accident or the Plaintiff's injuries from the accident.

It is hard for a lawyer to ask questions that intrude into a person?s painful or embarrassing moments even when they are relevant. I asked questions as a defense lawyer in wrongful death cases that I still feel ashamed of to this day. I still remember exactly how it feels to ask an AIDS patient or his family questions about the patient's sexual practices. Awful. But I was obligated to do it because it was relevant to how that person contracted AIDS.

In John's case, I can't imagine what goes on inside the mind of a lawyer who clearly does not have to ask a question like this but does so, anyway, for sport to embarrass or humiliate another human being.

I?ve always said you can tell a lot about a person by the way they treat the waiter. You can also tell a lot about the type of person a lawyer is by the questions they ask the victim in deposition.

Full post as published by Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog on October 15, 2008 (boomark / email).