Deposition Objections

Description

This handy softcover guide provides the grounds and language for: attorney-client privilege, attorney work-product privilege, proprietary and confidential information, witness self-incrimination, family communications privileges, privileges for communications with professionals, privacy privilege, legal process privilege, over-broad and burdensome questions, vagueness, ambiguity, repetition, lack of foundation, legal conclusions, and more.

• Verbal and non-verbal coaching of the witness
• Colloquies and stipulations among counsel
• Instructing the witness not to answer
• Disruptive or inappropriate objections
• Production of privileged or confidential documents

Perhaps because depositions are as close to a trial as many cases will get, deposition disputes have grown more heated and difficult to resolve.

Here is a portable and affordable volume that provides practical guidance for resolving many of the more contentious disputes. Joseph A. Ranney’s Deposition Objections offers help with these issues and objections:

Procedural issues

• 13 examples of when it is and when it is not appropriate to ask the court for a supervisory ruling
• When to instead adjourn and move for a protective order
• How to lay the groundwork for a supervisory ruling
• When is it okay to instruct a witness not to answer?
• Techniques for stopping bad attorney behavior at depositions
• Checklist of steps to take before adjourning a deposition
• When are you on safe ground when making a speaking objection?
• Guidelines for responding to a speaking objection
• Sample language for putting stipulations on the record

Grounds for objecting

• The limits of the attorney-client privilege, with checklist of when it does and does not apply: Form 4-1
• What are the limits of work-product immunity?
• How to resolve work-product disputes during a deposition
• Issues in formulating protective orders and common solutions
• Quick-reference chart showing the confines of professional privilege: Form 9-1
• What is the scope of the privacy privilege?
• Making the balancing calculation in legal process privilege objections, with examples. Summary checklist: Form 11-1
• The 5 situations when a relevance objection is proper
• Methods for resolving relevance disputes
• Handling attorneys and witnesses who play the dictionary game
• How many times should you allow a question to be asked?
• Preparing witnesses for loaded questions
• Should you instruct the witness not to answer a legal theory disclosure question?
• Are evidence identification questions allowed? What to consider when making the judgment call
• The line between permissible and impermissible position disclosure questions

REVISION 5 HIGHLIGHTS

Deposition Objections gives you dozens of objections and tactics for confronting and resolving contentious deposition disputes. This edition adds new text, tips, and approximately 100 new cases to help you protect your witness and your case. Revisions and additions include::

Chapter 1 OBJECTING TO DEPOSITION NOTICES AND SUBPOENAS

Proportionality (§§1:80, 1:81):

• In 2015, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure were amended to require that discovery be proportional to the needs of the case—which had a major impact on the scope of permissible deposition objections. This edition describes how courts are applying proportionality and how you can use this new law to make or oppose objections more effectively.

Chapter 4 ATTORNEY-CLIENT PRIVILEGE

Who Is an Attorney’s Representative for Purposes of Asserting the Privilege? (§4:20):

• How you can determine whether communications with people who are assisting you are shielded from discovery by your opponent.t

CHAPTER 10 ∙ RELEVANCE: PRIVACY PRIVILEGE

Requests for New Documents During a Deposition (§12:14):

• How to respond when your opponent makes a request for your client’s social media records— important new case law makes it more difficult to object to disclosure of those records.

CHAPTER 17 ∙ COACHING AND COMMUNICATIONS WITH THE WITNESS DURING BREAKS

Possible Sanctions for Improperly Talking to a Witness During a Deposition Breaks (§§17:52, 17:53):

• How to turn around improper deposition conferences between opposing counsel and his client and use them to aid your case at trial.

CHAPTER 22 ∙ OBJECTIONS TO VIDEOTAPE AND REMOTE DEPOSITIONS

Remote Depositions Before and After COVID (§§22:20-22:22):

• Remote depositions were rare before the COVID-19 pandemic; now they are essential. This edition explains how you can arrange remote depositions and use objections at such depositions to protect your client’s interests.

And More!