Posts by Esquire Deposition Solutions
Deposition in Hand, Party Need Not Testify at Trial
Are personal injury plaintiffs legally required to testify at their trials? Actually, not. Under the right circumstances, deposition testimony can be used in lieu of live trial testimony if the trial court finds that the witness is “unavailable.” In the federal system, Rule 32 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure provides several grounds for…
Read MorePoor Health, Family Obligations Supply Good Cause for Avoiding Deposition Travel
To their credit, experienced litigators are able to resolve the vast majority of pretrial discovery disputes without the need for court intervention. This is particularly true when the dispute in question is whether a particular deposition should be conducted in person or remotely. When negotiations break down over the location of a deposition or means…
Read MoreSidestepping Conflicts and Other Ethical Pitfalls in Employee Depositions
This blog post is the fourth in a series on common ethical challenges that arise when preparing for and conducting depositions. Quite often corporate employers want outside counsel to represent both the corporation and potential employee-witnesses during pretrial discovery depositions. Conflicts of interest are obviously lurking in these scenarios, although, in the case of current…
Read MoreCan Insurers Dictate How the Insured’s Deposition Will be Conducted?
This blog post is the third in a series on common ethical challenges that arise while preparing for and conducting depositions. Insurers and large corporate legal departments are sophisticated consumers of legal services, but they face a constant struggle to contain the ever-rising cost of litigation against a background of budget tightening by senior executives.…
Read MoreFalse Testimony During Deposition Calls for Careful Response
This blog post is the second in a series on common ethical challenges that arise when preparing for and conducting depositions. What is a litigator ethically bound to do when a client lies during a deposition? This is not an easy question to answer, even though lawyers are officers of the court and the rules…
Read MoreLawyer “Friend Requests” Are Off-Limits for Deposition Witness Research
This blog post is the first in a series on common ethical challenges that arise when preparing for and conducting depositions. Social media offers such a wealth of details about a person’s circumstances and beliefs that lawyers would be remiss to pass up the opportunity to conduct “informal discovery” of an upcoming deposition witness’s social…
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