Litigators, huh? At a training session today we dicussed deposition techniques - depositions allow lawyers to interview important witnesses under oath but before the trail begins. It quickly degenerated into story-time, including this story, held up as an instructive example.

The teacher talked about her deposition of a plaintiff who was bringing suit against the United States because she'd been fired. She claimed her life had fallen apart, including a divorce due to her husband's drinking. The lawyer soon discovered that this woman had been in a long term abusive relationship, where she was beaten on a weekly basis, sometimes severely, both before and after she was fired. The moral of the story, says the instructor - be thorough, you never know when you'll get great stuff like that to destroy your opponents case. That witness, the instructor bragged, barely got any money. She gave no hint, not even an aside, about this woman's plight. Her abuse was unambiguously presented as a great development. I mean, otherwise, the instructor would have lost the case. Duh. Then there was video tapes of upset, angry, crying deponents. These were met with laughter and derision from the instructors and class participants alike.

The moral of my story? Litigators have no morals.
- posted by Tom Sawyer @ 11:23 AM