Facebook Live: A short discussion about depositions

Hi everybody, its Washington state personal injury attorney Matt Dubin, and today I wanted to take a couple minutes to talk to you about depositions as always if you have any questions or comment go ahead and post them and I’ll try and address it while I’m online I’m going to keep this one a little bit short but I’ve gotten a lot of questions lately about depositions what is the deposition how does it go what does it mean to my case so typically in any lawsuit that’s filed there’s going to be some depositions we as your attorneys take depositions of witnesses that aren’t necessarily our allies the defendant other witnesses that may or may not be favorable if the defense has an expert of medical expert or an accident reconstructionist of some other kind of expert we’re going to take their deposition and the point is we want to find out what they know what they’re going to say at trial and we also want to pin down their testimony because they’re giving that testimony in a deposition under oath and if they try and change it later there’s going to be consequences now the same thing goes for you the defense lawyer gets to take a deposition of the plaintiff and the plaintiffs doctors and other witnesses that are favorable to the plaintiff now for you as the plaintiff as our client or as a client of some other attorney your deposition is very important first thing to know is this is a very routine procedure depositions happen in just about every case and it’s nothing to be especially scared or concerned about it’s just something that happens the number one piece of advice that we tell our clients going into a deposition is tell the truth we wouldn’t have taken your case unless the truth was good enough for you to win and the worst thing you could do is say something in your deposition that’s not true so the number one piece of advice is tell the truth the other thing that’s really important is that you’re not expected to remember every detail something that happened sometimes two or three or more years ago so you need to be okay with saying I don’t know or I don’t remember if that’s the truth now you need, you should say I don’t know I don’t remember it’s every question if you do that’s going to be suspicious and the reality is that’s just not true there are things you remember but if you don’t remember something it’s okay to say I don’t remember or I don’t know you need to remember that the attorney who’s taking your deposition isn’t your friend that the deposition isn’t there to help you it’s to help them build a case against you and so while we have nothing to hide and you should tell the truth you need to always be alert pay attention and not get into a casual conversational mode or discussion with the defense attorney there they’re probing you to find out what you’re going to say and depend on your testimony and so you need to pay attention and carefully answer their questions truthfully but only answering their questions without getting into a conversation it’s called these rules now let me just qualify this if you’re represented by somebody else sit down and talk to your attorney before you go into your deposition let them know what your concerns are then your attorney will go over what to expect and how to handle yourself in a deposition if you’re my client that’s exactly what’s going to happen you’re going to sit down with me or one of my attorneys and we’re going to address all of your concerns talk about what I’ve talked about in this video and more so that you’re comfortable you’re at ease and you know you can just go in and tell the truth and talk about what you remember and it’s going to be fine bottom line is a deposition is a very routine procedure that happens in every case in litigation it’s nothing to be alarmed about it’s nothing to be scared of and if you follow these simple guidelines and follow the advice of your attorney it’s going to go fine so that’s a deposition I appreciate you paying attention today and if you’ve got any questions or you got any other videos that you’d like me to make in the future please send us a message on our Facebook page and I’d be happy to shoot some more videos and address your concerns thanks and thanks Dave Annenberg for joining us on this video see y’all soon bite.