Medical Expert Witness Deposition

One of the most important parts of prosecuting a medical malpractice case is taking the discovery deposition of the medical expert for the adversary. This is so important that it should be done whether or not the Rules require it and whether or not payment to get it is required.

The discovery deposition of the adversarial expert allows you to see how strong and/or convincing a witness the expert may be. Many experts don’t dress well or come across well and this is important. Many experts have not completely prepared for their testimony for various reasons, either because they’re too busy, they haven’t been paid by counsel or they aren’t as knowledgeable as they’d have you believe. Moreover, very few lawyers actually take the time and money to prepare their expert for a deposition. This opens the gate of opportunity for you to catch them all off guard. For whatever gets typed up from that deposition will serve to marry the expert to that testimony. It prevents the expert and counsel from sitting down and cleaning things up for trial as is more common than doing this for deposition. If the expert tries to rehabilitate deposition testimony during trial then the expert is open to impeachment which is often times devastating in the eyes of a jury.

Counsel taking the deposition should prepare the medical aspects of the deposition with a medical consultant so that nuances and details of a medical nature can be captured. It is also very effective tactically to have a detailed medical section of the deposition prepared to effectively remove opposing counsel from meaningfully participating in the proceedings. The odds that counsel will have any idea of what you’re talking about or getting at with this approach are remote. This removes counsel’s ability to object, rehabilitate or otherwise coach. Often times this postures the case for settlement or victory.