The Illinois Trial Practice Weblog has a blog post last week suggesting a question to pose to experts: "What is your understanding of your role in this litigation?"
I like this question. I’ve asked the more loaded “Why were you hired in this case?” and questions to that effect but I like the exact wording because it is a less loaded question. As Evan Schaeffer points out in his post, if you ask this question to 10 different experts, you are likely to get 10 different answers.
Car accident lawyers who are putting up a treating doctor for deposition should remind the doctor when preparing him for this type of question that the doctor is there to talk about what happened to his patient. In auto accident cases where the plaintiffs’ doctors are typically treating doctors, the difference in the answers underscores a great advantage for plaintiffs’ accident lawyers: typically, our experts are doctors helping their patients as opposed to a hired gun offering opinions and making a great deal of money on a regular basis doing so.
Remember this is a deposition question. It would be an awful question to ask at trial unless you got a great answer in deposition.
