How to Prepare for a Deposition With Your Personal Injury Lawsuit

What a Deposition Entails in a Personal Injury Case

No matter how cautious you are when driving, there’s always a possibility that you will be involved in a car accident that will leave you injured in some manner. In 2016, more than 2.1 million people were injured from a car accident, which shows how common these accidents are. If you find that you’ve been injured following a car accident, contact our personal injury lawyers immediately at RAM Law so that we can assist you in finding the right legal option for your case.

What Is a Deposition?

A deposition can occur before your case goes to trial and is held during the discovery phase of the personal injury lawsuit. The point of a deposition is to gain evidence and information by interviewing certain individuals who are pertinent to your case. In fact, it’s likely that you will be deposed as well by the defendant. If the individual who has been deposed attempts to avoid going to the deposition, a subpoena can be filed to compel the person to attend.

The person who has been deposed will appear at a specific time and place to provide their sworn testimony, which means that they will answer questions under oath. The car accident lawyer you choose will ask these questions to anyone who your legal team deposes during discovery. In some cases, it’s possible for the testimony provided during the deposition to be admissible to the court during the actual trial.

Who Can Be Deposed?

It’s possible to depose anyone who has knowledge of the lawsuit that you’ve filed, which could include medical providers, witnesses to the car accident, and possibly any experts who are going to be called to testify by the defense. There are many reasons that plaintiffs choose to depose someone before their case goes to trial, the primary of which is that doing so allows them to obtain essential facts about their case. They can also gather information that highlights the weaknesses and strengths of their case. If you wait to ask certain questions until the trial, you may find out too late that these were the wrong questions to ask.

A deposition can also be used to determine how a witness or medical expert will testify when the case goes to trial. The plaintiff is commonly deposed by the defense in order to answer questions about how and when they were injured. While medical forms and relevant documents should be able to provide enough evidence that the injury occurred because of the car accident, the defense is likely going to attempt to prove that some or all of the injury occurred before or well after the accident.

Questions That May Be Asked During a Deposition

There are numerous questions that are regularly asked during a deposition for a personal injury lawsuit, the primary of which focuses on the injuries and illnesses that you may have suffered from throughout your life. Some additional topics that are covered during a deposition for this type of case include:

• What is the nature of the injury?
  
• How has the injury affected your everyday life?
  
• When did you receive your final treatment?
  
• Were there any witnesses to your accident?
  
• Have you been involved in other lawsuits?
  

How Our Accident Lawyer Can Help You

Here at RAM Law, our personal injury lawyer will be able to help guide you through the deposition while also determining which individuals should testify during the deposition. We will help you understand this process and the many benefits that you can obtain from it. If you are being deposed by the defense, we can help you prepare for the deposition by identifying some of the questions that might be asked during the testimony.

If your initial insurance claim was denied or you received a settlement offer that was too low, contact our accident lawyer in Somerville at (908) 448-2560 or in New Brunswick at (732) 247-3600 so that we can help you begin the personal injury lawsuit process.