Ask an Attorney - What Is the Discovery Process in Litigation?
The law can be a challenging thing. We use a different language. Much like when you hear doctors talking in the medical field, you'll hear words that are not common to you.
My name is Griff Tonkin, and I'm a partner here at the Arthofer & Tonkin Law Offices . We only handle personal injury cases. If you've been injured at the fault of someone else, call us today for a free consultation.
What I want to talk to you about today in our Ask a Lawyer series is the language of the law. Our clients ask us a lot of really good questions, and sometimes we take for granted some of the unique words that we use in the practice of law. Our clients will ask us what these things mean.
Sometimes we'll use words that are common, but they have a completely different meaning when it comes to personal injury litigation. Today, I want to talk to you about the discovery process. Now, we all have a pretty common understanding of the word discovery, but as it relates to litigation here in California, we have a very vigorous discovery process.
What that means is the other party to litigation has many tools that they can use to learn about your case, the evidence that we've compiled to support your claims, and we have the same tools to learn about the insurance company's case and the lawyers that they've hired, what defenses they might be putting forward, what evidence they might have, even what experts they might call should we have to take your case to trial. These discovery tools have a number of different unique names. I'm going to talk to you about those in this video.
So discovery, as a basic matter, is the other party's right to learn about your case, your claims, the evidence, the facts, and witnesses that are relevant to your case. Within discovery, we have things like interrogatories. It's a fancy word for questions.
There can be pre-printed questions that are approved by California's Judicial Council, and there can be specifically written questions that come from the lawyer on the other side that you have to answer. When you're working with one of the lawyers here at Arthofer and Tonkin, we're going to craft the answer for you, insert all appropriate legal objections, refuse to answer inappropriate questions, and work with you and compile the data necessary to answer questions that are not objectionable and are appropriate. But we're not going to let the discovery process become abusive, which it can and can rapidly.
And in fact, that's a common technique of insurance companies and their lawyers. Also a part of discovery is the power of subpoena. Subpoena is a court order to produce documents or things or even a person.
And as an attorney, we have the right to use the subpoena power. Similarly, tfhe lawyer on the other side has the right to use the power of subpoena to learn about your case. This can be for straightforward things like medical records.
If you're claiming that you've been injured in a case, your medical records related to those injuries are discoverable, and that can be acquired through subpoena. But you need a lawyer who's not going to just ignore the subpoenas that come across the desk. You need a lawyer who's going to read the subpoenas and make sure the scope is appropriate.
They're not asking for records to go too far back or for parts of your body that are not an issue or ask for utterly inappropriate things. You'd be surprised how often we see subpoenas that are overbroad or otherwise drafted, utterly inappropriate. Just because you filed a personal injury case doesn't mean you surrender all of your rights to privacy.
You make limited exceptions to your right to privacy to put on your case, but that's it. We also get questions about a process called deposition. It's an interesting word, but basically what a deposition is, the opportunity for the adverse party's lawyer to ask you questions under oath about your case.
That can be intimidating. It's a bit like cross-examination, but it happens in a slightly informal setting, usually in a conference room at a court reporter's office, sometimes modernly in the post-COVID era, even by Zoom or other video sharing platform on the internet. What you need to know is that you need an attorney.
You need an attorney to sit beside you who's handled hundreds of thousands of depositions like myself and my business partner, Ken Arthofer, who knows how to prepare you for a deposition, how to walk with you through a deposition, and how to make sure you're not taken advantage of in a deposition by the insurance company lawyer. Discovery can be an intimidating thing to think about. We try and make it as minimally imposing on our clients as possible.
We try and do as much for you as possible. If you've been involved in a personal injury accident, you need an attorney who's experienced in all phases of litigation, including discovery in all of its many forms, who can represent you. That's who we are here at the Arthofer & Tonkin Law Offices.
We welcome the opportunity to consult and call our office today.
