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Before a trial in a personal injury case, the lawyers from both sides get to ask questions of selected witnesses. That questioning process takes place during a discovery session. The person that needs to answer the lawyers’ questions gets deposed.
How are the witnesses selected?
• Each witness is someone that has knowledge related to the case, or someone that can recall facts related to the same case.
• The person that filed the lawsuit, the plaintiff is always questioned.
• The defendant, the person allegedly responsible for the injury-causing accident must be questioned.
Some of the witnesses have had previous contact with either the plaintiff or the defendant.
An eyewitness could be deposed. The physician that treated the plaintiff might be called to a deposition. The lawyers might want information on the activities in the life of both the plaintiff and the defendant during the period before the accident. For that reason, their friends, neighbors and co-workers could be asked to come to a deposition.
If the plaintiff had needed a caregiver while recovering from his or her injury, then that same caregiver might get deposed.
The role and identity of expert witnesses
Those experts were not able to witness the accident, but each of them has some knowledge that relates to a certain aspect of that same accidental occurrence. For that reason, any one of them might serve as a witness during the deposition.
If issues related to the plaintiff’s future job opportunities would be addressed, then an expert in economics would be a welcome witness. Experts in economics study the projected cost of living at a given time in the future.
If the lawyers hoped to learn more about the possible causes for a particular car accident, then an accident-reconstruction engineer might be deposed. Alternatively, someone that had knowledge of the accident site, or of the involved vehicles might be deposed.
At a slip and fall deposition, an expert from the construction industry might get called as a witness. The owner of the property where the plaintiff slipped and fell might also get called to serve as a witness. If the fall had taken place at a retail establishment, then the retailer would need to be deposed.
If the Personal Injury Lawyer in Hamilton for the plaintiff hoped to make some point about the plaintiff’s medical condition, then that same attorney might depose an expert in the medical field. Still, not all experts have the same opinion, regarding any specific issues.
For that reason, the questioning of a second medical expert might follow the deposition of the one called by the plaintiff’s attorney. That second expert would be someone that could argue against the first expert’s opinion. Both opinions would relate to the accident.