Litigation Support

Soft Tissue Attorneys? Deposition Technique [video]

By Blake Boyd

We routinely provide courtroom setup and playback of video depositions for small car wreck cases. It’s actually a pretty good bargain for the attorney as we: Synch the video depositions, make the clips, link the evidence, setup/break down the equipment, and playback the video. We’re in and out within a couple of hours as we always play back the police officer followed by the medical expert and then our role is complete.


While completing some last minute synch’ing for one of the two trials that we provided litigation support for last week, I came across a great technique that I had never seen done before. It grabbed my attention because I don’t think I’ve ever seen this done before.

My client pulled up the doctor’s website (the deponent), where he had an animation of the surgery that was preformed waiting to be played back. The camera focused on the laptop screen and this is what the jury saw (remember it’s a 100″ screen they’re viewing this on):





The next question was:

5 Q. All right. Thank you. And the — Those slides
6 as well as the chart that you described earlier, do
7 those reasonably and accurately depict this type of –
8 of surgery and also the condition that you described for
9 us earlier?
10 A. Yes.

If you didn’t notice the graphics and animations got proved up and displayed during the video deposition. While it may not be on the top of your “what to do in a deposition” list, it’s wise to consider displaying your demonstrative evidence while in the video deposition.

By playing back the video deposition my client was able to save the expense of live testimony. At the same time, he got his demonstrative evidence of the surgery admitted, and sometimes getting this sort of evidence admitted can be an authoritative issue if you have no one in court to prove it up.

Just goes to prove that it is possible to use technology to help bolster your case, even if the damages don’t initially leave you to believe it would be cost effective.

Full post as published by The Trial Technologist's View on October 23, 2008 (boomark / email).