Personal Injury Law

NY Accident Lawyer Practice Tip? Don?t Answer Questions You Don?t Have To!

By JimReed

For my fellow NY accident attorney readers, we all know that answering the defense lawyer’s Demand for Bill of Particulars is a necessary evil.  Necessary because we are required to do it and evil because a trial judge will generally limit your proof at trial to your answers to the defendant’s demand.  Accordingly, for those questions you are required to answer, it is important that your answers be as complete as possible.  However, because a BOP Response is a pleading and responses are admissible at trial, you don’t want to answer any more questions than are legally required.  That’s where this practice tip comes in.  My advice is that you review the BOP demands carefully and ONLY answer those BOP demands that are appropriate and OBJECT to any BOP demands that are inappropriate.

I have noticed a recent trend with defense lawyers asking more and more BOP questions that are clearly objectionable.

I think alot of this may be due to the fact that some plaintiff’s lawyers haven’t bothered to read CPLR §3043 which specifies just 9 areas of inquiry in a NY personal injury action.  That’s right, just 9 areas of inquiry.  So the next time you get a BOP Demand that goes outside these 9 areas of inquiry, you can reply:  Improper Demand, beyond the scope of CPLR §3043.

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Full post as published by New York Injury Law Blog on February 15, 2008 (boomark / email).