Once you file suit in your Georgia auto wreck case, you are almost certainly going to be deposed as part of the discovery process. How do you prepare for your deposition with your Cumming personal injury attorney and what will happen at your deposition?
Most likely your attorney will want to meet with you in the week prior to your deposition to prepare you for what is coming. The attorney will give you a list of possible questions you can expect. Your attorney will most likely ask you to also review your discovery responses, which you would have already filed earlier in this case. The purpose of this is to refresh your recollection as to what you previously stated under oath and to keep those answers consistent throughout the case.
The deposition will be transcribed by a court reporter, and in some instances even videotaped. In addition to the court reporter and yourself, the attorneys for you, the defendant, and possibly an additional involved insurance carrier, will all be present.
Fair warning, the deposition might be boring. After being sworn in, you will probably be asked some questions about you and your family’s background and activities in the community. This will be for among other reasons, to help the adverse attorney for jury selection in the even the case tries later.
You will surely be asked about your medical history, both preceding and following the auto collision at issue. The circumstances that led to the collision and what happened between the scene will also come up at the deposition. Particularly in a case with substantial damages, the attorney will ask you a question like “how has this injury impacted you?”
Understand that the primary purposes of your deposition are for the defense to (1) learn information about your life and your injuries to evaluate the case and (2) to lock you into your position that you will use at trial. The deposition is a sworn statement so should you give a different version at trial, you can be “impeached” by your prior inconsistent statement under oath.
At trial, the defense attorney questioning of you can be adversarial, and certainly will not be geared at allowing you to speak much. However, at deposition, the questions will be tailored to give you room to talk. The defense attorney will probably be very cordial with you as well.
Peter Bricks is a Cumming personal injury and bankruptcy attorney in the metro Atlanta area, who files cases in the Magistrate Court of Cherokee County.