Episode 81 - How (and Why) to Ask Deponents About Prior Sworn Testimony

In this episode, Jim Garrity stresses the importance of systematically asking deponents to catalogue their prior testimonial experience in any form or forum. A witness' prior testimony can be an intelligence goldmine. No company Garrity knows of maintains (or at least admits to maintaining) a readily-available record of where, when and on what its current and former employees have testified. So the best source - unfiltered by opposing lawyers - are witnesses in their depositions. Garrity shares the question he asks witnesses for this purpose, for creating a record under oath of the existence of relevant transcripts or affidavits that can then be subpoenaed, obtained through a request for production, or through FOIA.

SHOW NOTES:

Boyd v. Youth Opportunity Investments, LLC, 2022 WL 332380, Case No. 3:20-cv-321-TAV-DCP (E. E. Tennessee February 3, 2022) (order directing parties to confer about exactly what deposition testimony Plaintiff wanted from another case, and directing Defendant to produce transcripts from that case that did not contain statutorily-protected material about minors at a facility Defendant managed)

Umfress v. City of Memphis, 2018 WL 11396506, Case No. 2:17-cv-02568-SHL-TMP (W. D. Tennessee Sept. 7, 2018) (court compelled city to produce relevant deposition transcripts from related or prior litigation notwithstanding protective order applicable to those transcripts)

Rogue v. CoreLogic Credco, LLC, 2020 WL 1907558, Case No. 1:19-cv-00260-BLW  (D. Idaho April 16, 2020 (company order to redact and produce transcript from prior similar proceeding that was allegedly subject to protective order in prior pursuit)

Bayer Healthcare Pharmaceuticals, Inc., et al. v. River’s Edge Pharmaceuticals LLC, et al., 2014 WL 11517823, Case No. 1:11-cv-1634-RLV-ECS (N. D. Georgia June 25, 2014) (order clarifying that Plaintiff was to produce transcripts from depositions in another case)