Effective Use of Requests for Admission
You once heard that requests for admission are a severely
underutilized tool. So you tried using them and filed detailed requests in a
case. Yet you accomplished absolutely nothing because the defendant's
attorney categorically denied virtually every request for admission.
There are two good tactics to consider when faced with this
typical obstruction. The first is to propound an alternative interrogatory
upon the defendant which asks the defendant's lawyer to set forth all facts
and evidence upon which the defendant intends to rely upon at trial to
support the defense lawyer's denial of the request for admission. This
type of interrogatory helps to put defendant's case into a tighter box.
This box tends to be even tighter if you are propounding your discovery at
the beginning of the case. Most lawyers begin to look creatively at their
case just before trial. Forcing the defendant to take early positions gives you a competitive advantage.
The second tactic to use when faced with nonsensical denials is
to do absolutely nothing at all. At trial, read the request for
admissions to the jury. The most typical denial used is defendant's denial that the hospital bills and treatment were causally related to the accident. The message the jury gets loud and clear is that Mr./Ms. Defense Counsel is acting very reasonable now but defendant’s lawyers have fought the injured plaintiff at every single turn on every single issue, regardless of the merits of that issue. This gives the defense attorney an edge in the most critical fight between lawyers in a jury trial: the battle for credibility.
