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Veteran attorneys, Wade Coye and Dan Smith from the Coye Law Firm, discuss attorneys making objections during depositions and why it is so important to put objections on the record.
Offices in Orlando, Florida.
Transcript:
Wade:
"A lot of times people will hear about things, objections that are raised at depositions, they've seen it on TV and they have that. What goes on when there are objections? I think that's something that people want to hear about. I mean, we know what the purpose of why we raise an objection during the deposition or we raised objections during trial proceeding, but I think it's important for everybody to understand what that basic objections that we raise and more importantly are there circumstances that I think we need to let everybody know about where they should not answer a question, and that's a fairly narrow range of situations."
Dan:
"Most of the time when we're objecting, we're doing it solely for the purpose of what we call, "Keeping the record." We're just doing it so that later if someone wants to read that deposition transcript, that objection is preserved, so they can't use that portion against them. Most of our objections are to what we call the "Form of the Question." We just didn't like something about the format, but a good one is, you know, hey Wade, if I asked you, please tell me every time you've ever been injured."
Wade:
"I would have a tough time telling you those things, like how serious are we talking about here? Then you'd have to ask ten follow-up questions otherwise I would just probably talk all afternoon."
Dan:
"Absolutely. Are we talking about when you fell when you were on your tricycle when you were two? Or are we talking about serious things like when you went to the hospital? So I would object as to the form of that question. Or I may say or you may hear in more specific terms, "vague and overbroad." But you'd still answer that question. You'd just do it to the best of your ability. More serious objections are things like objection confidentiality attorney-client privilege. For instance, if I was representing and a defense attorney asked you, "Well, what did you and Mr. Smith talk about right before you came in to the deposition?" Well, that's none of their darn business what we talked about because I'm representing you, and they don't have a right to know about that."
Wade:
"We talk about that with clients all time. We don't usually have an instance, but let's talk a little bit about work product too, where that goes. They say they want to know what's your strategy on making this case to trial."
Dan:
"Absolutely. So if we had some discussions and said, hey, this is what we're doing. You know, we have those conversations with our client so the conversation itself would be protected, but also what we told them about, hey, we're going to take this deposition or get this doctor to do this or this is our theory of the case and maybe we'll have multiple theories. You don't have to give that up. That would be what we call "work product privilege." So you don't have to do that. You may not have to give up certain things. For instance, maybe you took some pictures in anticipation of the litigation or maybe we had you go out and do some things into anticipation of the case. So those are some more serious objections where we would instruct you not to answer the question."
