MORE FROM THE “YOU CAN’T MAKE THIS STUFF UP” FILES
When I was a newly minted attorney, my boss asked me to defend a deposition.
Our client had stopped short in his cab and been rear-ended.
I had not done many depositions before and I wanted to read up on it.
I found and read a 50-page booklet that reproduced a deposition of a person who had been struck by car while crossing the street in a small town in Illinois.
After reading it, I gave it to my client. “Read it,” I said, “It will give you some idea of what questions to expect.”
A few days later, at the deposition, opposing counsel screwed his face to the breaking point when my client robotically answered questions which detailed how he had been struck by a car as he crossed the street in a small town in Illinois.
I was temporarily struck dumb with a cocktail mix of horror, anxiety, and complete incomprehension of what was passing through my client’s head.
I asked my opponent if we could take a break, and when I let my client out of a headlock, I asked him to take a breath and confirm that he was parroting the booklet I had given him.
After he confirmed this, I pulled opposing counsel aside and somewhat reluctantly alluded to the reason for the confusion and because God is merciful, this attorney found it funny as hell, and agreed to what we would call in the schoolyards of Brooklyn a “do-over.”
We restarted the deposition as though nothing happened and my client remembered that he had been in cab in New York that stopped short.
I now have a trick, if you will.
I show my client, in preparing for the deposition, my black pen.
“Is my pen red?” I ask the client.
If they say “no, ” I compliment them and if they say “No, your pen is black, ” I chide them. “Answer only the question you are asked,” I tell them.
I fear that one day, while being deposed, one of my clients will be asked which way he/she was looking when they approached the intersection, and he or she will blurt out, “The pen is black.”
I know this will happen.
