Ernie the Attorney

This discussion of Form Interrogatories was written by Jacob Stein, and I posted it here because I wanted people to see his brilliant insight into this issue (which is not available online).  I encourage all of you who find this to enter his name in Google and find the other gems that are available by him, and to try get a copy of his book, which is called "The Legal Spectator."

How I love to receive a set of them! With a connoisseur’s eye I compare them to the form interrogatories in my own collection. Most sets that come my way are unimaginative copies of one of the six or more master sets produced in the 1950's by those craftsmen who flourished during that golden period of interrogatory framers. The set I have in my hand is the gem of any collection - a legal vacuum cleaner searching for the dirt in the life of the plaintiff to whom it is addressed.

Question 12 arbitrarily demands the disclosure of every doctor the plaintiff has seen for the past 10 years, the reason for seeing the doctor, the nature of the treatment and if the treatment was for a contagious disease, how the disease was contracted.

The other questions are equally presumptions. They tear away all the shelter that the soul has constructed against the slings and arrows. Question after question is a thrust and grab at the seat of privacy.

The classic interrogatory framers constructed their masterpieces with three goals in mind.

1. Retrieve information relevant to the case in issue.

2. A catechization to ensnare the deponent when the trap is sprung.

3. Terrorize the deponent into dismissing the suit or settling under panic considerations

Although category 3 frequently has its desired effect, there are those who love to answer personal questions and the more there are, the better she likes it. I say "she" because the person I have in mind is a woman in her late 50's who may pass for 43 in the dusk with the light behind her. She has chosen not to marry. She carries her social security number on the tip of her tongue.

She is the woman who takes the seat in the front row at a shareholders meeting and asks the chief executive officer to justify his expense account. She is the woman who has a congenital anomaly of the lower spine, one might say a spondylolisthesis, which rendered her vulnerable to the trauma for which see seeks damages. She remembers every ache and pain caused by the defendant’s negligence.

A request to lift up her financial skirts causes her no apprehension. Not only is she undaunted by form interrogatories, she embraces the supplemental interrogatories which dig yet deeper into closed accounts and long-forgotten peccadilloes. She evades no question because she believes evasion is the common shelter of the false.

When her attorney receives the answers she has carefully written out in long hand he must look forward to hours of constant comment as she marches our fact, opinion and surmise. She never fatigues. Her lawyer frequently does and he must steal out on the pretext of receiving an extremely important long distance call, as I have just done.

Miss G is now sitting in my office as I write these lines. She’s been there now for two hours answering questions 26:

Give the exact time when you first experienced pain, where you experienced it, was it temporary or permanent, how was it treated, has it ever hurt you there before, when, where, how much, how many...

Last update: 6/16/2003; 9:35:29 PM.