Ep 151: Inside Discovery – Interrogatories, Admissions, and the Commitment It Takes

Clark: I’m Clark Speaks, the catastrophic injury lawyer. Welcome to the verdict. Welcome back to Catastrophic Comeback. I’m, um, Clark Speaks. I’m here with Jeff Watson. Jeff Watson is managing attorney at Speaks law firm. We’re continuing our conversation on the litigation process. Jeff, I want to talk to you briefly about the discovery, uh, phase. Uh, we’ve talked about litigation, what it means, We’ve talked about pleadings. Now we want to talk about, uh, the discovery phase, uh, uh, what are the components of the discovery phase of litigation case?

Jeff Watson: So after, you know, the complaint’s filed and they’ve answered and the pleadings have gone back and forth, then the parties will send each other what we call discovery. That takes the form of a couple different things. One is interrogatories. That’s basically questions that you ask the other side, and you’re limited as to how many you can ask by the rules. So you got to be. You got to make sure you’re asking the right questions, you know, up front and not wasting questions. So we’re asking all kinds of information. Who are your witnesses? What evidence do you have? Turn over any kind of written communications. Uh, and there’s a million questions that you can ask in those things. But. So we send questions to the other side, they’ll send questions to us. We have to answer those within a certain time period. If you don’t, you can get in trouble with the judge. You can have your case thrown out if you don’t answer in the right time frame. So we’re trying to get documents together, answer, uh, those questions. That’s interrogatories. There’s requests for documents which are where we will say, turn over any written communications, any contracts, any bills, any, um, insurance policies. Insurance policies, uh, expert witness reports, you know, anything that’s in writing or on a computer. Uh, we.

Clark: Video, audio.

Jeff Watson: We would ask for all that in the request for documents. Then there’s request for admissions. That’s where we’ll write specific things out, specific statements, and make them admit or deny the statement. Uh, and that really can pin them in. Uh, because if they deny something and it later comes out that they have to admit that, then that hurts their credibility. They’ve lied, you know, early on in the case.

Clark: Um,

Jeff Watson: in other situations, if they admit things, sometimes that hurts their case, you know, and we’ve got to be careful, too, because they’re sending those. Those admissions to us as to what we admit, what we don’t admit, and how we answer those things. It’s very technical, it’s very tricky, and there’s time limits. If you don’t turn those in those answers in a certain period of time, you’re deemed to have admitted them, all of them, which can be devastating, that can immediately get a case tossed out.

Clark: So in general, in my experience, uh, admissions, when they come in, it puts everybody on a higher level of alert because of the time sensitive nature, because of the uh, uh, if they don’t answer in a timely manner, they’re deemed admitted. Um, uh, there can be cost, uh, ramifications for admissions. But also in addition to raising the level of, uh, of uh, the stakes when admissions are filed, I’ve also been struck by that they’re not used as frequently by a lot of firms as, as they could be. Um, uh, is that your impression?

Jeff Watson: Yeah. Not at all. Um, it’s extra work to come up, produce those. And they’re strategic. Like the way you ask questions is you have to be very careful about it because if you ask them the wrong way, then they can just deny them truthfully. So you’ve got to really try to pin them in and have a strategy that you’re trying to accomplish in these things. Like if you admit this here, you have to admit this, and if you admit that, you got to admit this. And they just sort of build on each other and you’re walking them into a corner and they don’t even know it. Um, and we have to be careful because they might be trying to walk us into a corner. So we got to, we got to be careful. Um, there’s also what I like to call an 8A2 request where the defense will usually, and that’s based on a rule of civil procedure, uh, rule, rule 8A2. And they’ll send to us and they’ll say, what’s your demand? What are you asking for? And we got to be careful with that too.

Clark: Meaning what?

Jeff Watson: Meaning they want to know what our demand is. If we go in front of a

Clark: jury, like how much money, how much

Jeff Watson: money do we want to be awarded in this case? And if we say too little, then, you know, later on it, it can mess you up. Uh, if we uh, if we say too much, then when you get in front of the jury, you know, it doesn’t look very good. So you got to be really strategic about how you, you know, what you put on those things.

Clark: So this is this what we’re, what we’re discovering, I think, is that the whole thing and each of the components, right, requires uh, a lot of experience, uh, a lot of some art, some science, uh, some commitment M. My experience also is that most, uh, a lot of firms will just, they’ll have the same discovery for every case. They do nothing with car wrecks. They’ll have the same discovery for every case. And they just send it out. It’s like you got the wrong names on it or just he, him or whatever. And uh, they’ll just send it all out. And uh, um. But when we do that the right way and we do that effectively and we do this custom discovery in a case, does it produce helpful information?

Jeff Watson: I mean, it does. You’re getting them to admit certain things. They’re having to turn over documents they didn’t want you to see. Uh, and I’ve known attorneys and seen firms where when that discovery comes in from the other side, it might be multiple boxes of papers and they’re like, oh my goodness, like, I don’t want to go through this. Boxes of papers, A, uh, thousand pages in every box. You know, and so, you know, it does take commitment. You mentioned that word. Because you have to be really careful when you’re going. You have to go through all that stuff and see what they’ve produced to you. Because there might be a smoking gun in there that they buried somewhere in that 5,000 pages in five boxes of discovery they gave you. Or it could be 20 boxes of discovery. You know, I’ve seen rooms filled up discovery before. Um, and you have to be careful to take those boxes one at a time, each page, look at it and see, you know, make sure that there’s not some hidden nugget down in there that would turn the case upside down.

Clark: So my experience is that most, most of the, most of the time they’ll. Companies and insurance, uh, companies and defendants and corporate defendants will turn over the information that you asked for. Uh, they know that there’s ah, some pretty serious liability for them if they don’t. But sometimes, uh, some of them are not above taking a couple of important documents out from where it might belong and put it in a different place so that they can say, hey, I gave it to you. But I mean, you might not notice it because it’s not in the place that you anticipated being.

Jeff Watson: Yeah. Or you’re looking at a document and down at the end, at the bottom of the page it’ll say page one. And so you look through it, you got two, you got three page. There’s no page four, there’s no page 12. Well, I need page four and page 12, you know, because they just conveniently pulled that out and sent you the rest, hoping you would not pay attention to the page numbers, you know, things like that that you got to pay attention to.

Clark: So, so that, that brings us back to something, uh, more than just discovery and the technical requirements of discovery. And that is a fundamental, uh, the commitment piece of it that we’ve talked about a couple of times. It’s come back, uh, up here and there. In your experience and you’ve worked with different lawyers and different firms in different, uh, contexts. Does everybody. Is this commitment even across, uh, the field of lawyers that you’ve worked with in the past?

Jeff Watson: No, it’s not. I mean, I’ve, you know, I’ve seen lawyers that have worked with lawyers that were really diligent. They, the, you know, they were careful about the questions they asked. They were careful about what questions they answered. They would object to certain things. Uh, they were very careful going through documents and just, you know, very, a very tedious process, but they were very careful. And then I’ve worked with other lawyers that when it came in, you know, they might hand it to a secretary and say, look through this thing and see what you see. You know. Well, you know, that’s not to say there aren’t some smart secretaries out there, but I’m not sure that’s who I’m hiring to go through my legal documents, you know, um, you know, you mentioned, you know, we talked earlier about the size of a firm and advantages to, you know, it is a strategy sometimes of defendants to bury you in discovery. And, and we’ve all seen movies and stuff where they sort of, you know, maybe exaggerated a little bit, but, you know, there’s like 50 boxes of discovery that come in and you’ve got this lawyer who’s working on his own. How’s he gonna get through 50 boxes of discovery in the next 60 days? He’s not. You know. Now in the movies, magically they can and they find the smoking gun. But in reality that’s gonna be really hard, you know, if you’ve got multiple lawyers that can dig in on it and multiple paralegals that are helping you sort things. And uh, you’re much more likely to get through that stuff and find what it is you need.

Clark: So this issue of commitment came up with my, uh, daughter a couple of days ago, um, when we were talking about this and she was sort of asking me about, uh, this idea of commitment. In my experience, the commitment is, ah, not necessarily something that is shared by everyone. Some people have different levels of commitment, just like with anything else. I mean, we play, you know, you played college Sports. And I guess after college you played, continued to play. Um, and I played high school. And there’s some kids that were committed and some kids that were less committed and some parents that were committed and some. See, we know everybody in all kinds of different places, environments and contexts that, that share this, that show commitment and not. I remember, um, you know, I remember. So you and I started firms at different points. I started a firm when I got out of school. And so I remember the first person that ever came to me. And I’m sitting there thinking, you know, I’m talking to them and I’m like trying to maintain my professional, uh, you know, Persona. But at the same time I’m like, I cannot believe that you came to see me, to entrust me with your problem of what’s going on, you know, and uh, the magnitude of that situation that like this is what I wanted to do is to be able to help somebody through a difficult time. And now you’re sitting here in front of me and I remember this, how happy I ah, was to be in that situation. And I remember thinking to myself, I need to always cherish, uh, this relationship and I need to cherish. And so then you fast forward a few. I used to do a lot of criminal stuff. Um. M. For a long time I did uh, criminal stuff. And uh, one of the first real, real serious criminal cases that I had, uh, I think I’ve told you this before, is that uh, we finished with a witness like five o’ clock on like a Tuesday. And then m. Uh, my next witness for the defense was uh, being released from a prison on the other side of the state. And so I had to uh, figure out a way to get that person here by nine o’ clock the next morning. And uh, there just wasn’t any way to, to do that, right. So I finish at five and then I get in my uh, car and I made arrangements, and I made arrangements to drive from this side of the state to the other side of the state, pick the guy up and I could take a shower. I could get back to my house, take a shower and get to court by nine. I’d had just enough time to do that. So I set out, I get about uh, halfway there and uh, the guy that ran the jail on the other side of the state had got wind of the fact that I was doing that and was like, hey, um, called me on my uh, cell phone. Uh, uh, it was one of those Nextel, you know, uh, things from the late um, 90s, I guess. But anyway, he Said, hey, listen, I found out what you’re doing. I’ve made arrangements to have this guy, uh, sent over to your side of the state and he can be released from there so that you don’t have to do this. Uh, which I really appreciated because I’m like, hey, this is a guy who’s interested in justice and not so much just, you know, running his. And that we were able to get the, uh, witness there. But, but, but, um, the whole point of that story is not, you know, is just to do whatever this, this commitment, this idea of this commitment to do whatever it takes, uh, to help, uh, your client achieve the result and the justice that they want or need or deserve. And I’ve seen dozens and dozens of examples of you doing something similar where you’re just like, hey, whatever it takes to be able to put this person in a better place and to tell the story effectively. Uh, so that commitment is a huge part of what we do.

Jeff Watson: Well, most of the lawyers that we have here, just about every one of them, I think, uh, with the exception of maybe one, has had their own firm at some point. When you got your own firm, you value clients because there’s no guarantee anybody’s going to use your firm, you know, so when you do have a client, like you said, it’s. They’re important, you know, uh, is it much different than when you work for some gigantic firm and, you know, they just bring the clients in for you? But because our lawyers have. Have had their own firm, you know, they understand the value of a client. They understand having to go the extra mile and, uh, you know, make sure that clients gets justice, that they get what they deserve. And, um, and they’re willing to, you know, work late in the night or, you know, whatever it is they have to do to. To get the job done.

Clark: And it’s. It’s more than just to me. It’s like. It’s a deeply personal relationship. When you have had, uh, an experience where, you know, uh, your name’s on the door, uh, the clients come to see you sitting, uh, down in the chair that you picked out from Office Depot or whatever, you know, and you’re, you know, in your. That’s a deeply personal relationship. And that, I think, is why so many of the people that we have in our firm, I, the, uh. I can only think of one lawyer, uh, in our firm that does. Did not have her, um, uh, her own firm before she started. And I would put her up against anybody on the. On the face of the earth, you know, because she’s phenomenal. But everybody else has had their own firm, uh, at some point or another and just understands and appreciates, uh, the magnitude of that commitment. Well, thank you for speaking to me about that, Jeff. I appreciate it.

Jeff Watson: Thanks.

Clark: Thanks for joining us. Don’t forget to subscribe and follow us to stay up to date with our weekly episodes. We’ll see you next time.

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