Trial Lawyer Resource Center

Why take a deposition?  To find out what the witness is going to say?  Sure.  But it is just as important to find out what the witness is not going to say, particularly with a witness that is likely to be adverse.  Accordingly, in an auto accident case, you need to establish what the eyewitness saw and heard, what they did not see or hear, and what they think they saw or heard but do not have the factual predicate to draw the conclusions they have drawn.

In auto accident cases, the deposition tactics often revolve around the issue of speed.  In Maryland, Virginia, the District of Columbia, Alabama, and North Carolina, where the draconian contributory negligence laws remain on the books (we are fighting in the legislature this year for comparative negligence in Maryland), speed is always the last resort of defense attorneys who (1) have nothing to argue, or (2) want to argue everything.

If you have an adverse witness on the issue of speed, you obviously have to ask how fast the witness thinks your client was driving and find out what foundation they have for their estimation of speed.  Make sure you conduct complete speed and distance questioning as well.  By complete, I mean full questioning as to how long the witness observed the vehicles traveling, how long it took, and what was the distance covered.  Ask the question in miles, yards, feet, car lengths, etc.  It is rare that anyone other than a well trained police officer can answer consistently time and distance calculations in the first place, much less when they are required to make the same distance measurements using different standards.  If an adverse fact witness offers conflicting testimony as to the speed, it may negate the impact of his/her testimony or give the personal injury attorney grounds to exclude the witness' testimony at trial. 

To see sample depositions in auto accident and truck accident cases, click here.

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A number of attorneys find value in radio advertising, me included.  Radio spots in metro cities work especially well, and in smaller towns they are relatively inexpensive.

I  have been able to  find out what works in radio spots.  I call them Mark's Radio Rules.

First,  an easy to remember telephone number. Whether it is a vanity number like 1-800-JUSTICE or a simple number like 800-444-2222, the key is having that number.

Second, repeat the number at least three times. Once within the first 5-10 seconds, once in the middle, and once more at the end.

Third,  have  an easy  to remember  .com address.  One that works is simply using the telephone number, such as  "our website is our telephone number,  800justice.com.  This works if you have a hard to spell website or one that is phonetically vague- such as as last name that could be "C" or "K."

Fourth, keep them short - thirty seconds at most.

Today I heard an ad that violated those rules. The ad ran sixty seconds.  The telephone number in the Atlanta area had a 404, and then numbers that were all over the place, none of which were repeating.
As I listened,  I  kept waiting for the telephone number.  At the end, the number was repeated twice within the last five seconds of the spot.  By then, most listeners had changed the channel to another station, thus the importance of saying the number within the first 5-10 seconds.

Finally, the ad did not direct the listener (which in Atlanta is probably a person behind the wheel at 8:10 a.m., when the spot ran) to any website.   As a bonus, the attorney firm had a  firm name that  was difficult to spell.  Interestingly enough, after finally finding the firm's website, what did I find? A pretty decent domain name that is very easy to remember.

I blame not only the attorney  for the mess that went on air but the ad agency that allowed this to be produced.  If the attorney simply placed the ad himself, the radio station should have done more than simply taken the money for the spot.

Is  an attorney in your area making these mistakes? Are you?
 

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