Litigation
Cal. Litig. VOLUME 37, ISSUE 3, DECEMBER 2024
Content
- Attorney Proffers Post-menendez: How To Make the Risk Worth the Reward
- Chair's Column
- Climbing the Mountain Again
- Editor's Foreword: New Leadership Arrives
- How Joining the California Supreme Court Historical Society Can Benefit You
- Inside This Issue
- Over Ruled: the Human Toll of Too Much Law
- PAST SECTION CHAIRS & EDITORS-IN-CHIEF
- Postscript: Updating California's International Arbitration Code
- Presidential Immunity: Precedential Impunity?
- Reconciling the Duty of Zealous Advocacy and Civility
- Remember Korematsu?
- SECTION OFFICERS & EDITORIAL BOARD
- Table of Contents
- The California Supreme Court In Judicial Year 2024: the C.J. Guerrero Era Is Underway
- Who Owns This Sentence?: a History of Copyrights and Wrongs
- Working: Conversations With Essential Workers
- Selected Evidence Issues With Depositions of the Person Most Qualified/Knowledgeable In California and Federal Courts In the Ninth Circuit
SELECTED EVIDENCE ISSUES WITH DEPOSITIONS OF THE PERSON MOST QUALIFIED/KNOWLEDGEABLE IN CALIFORNIA AND FEDERAL COURTS IN THE NINTH CIRCUIT
Written by Hon. Allan J. Goodman (Ret.)
It is the final status conference (FSC) in superior court. Your witness list includes the person most qualified (PMQ) of your client whose deposition was taken for two days, during which the testimony elicited is helpful to establishing your case in chief.
When the time comes during the FSC for confirmation of witnesses, your adverse counsel utters these words: "We object to our adversary eliciting trial testimony from its PMQ; the PMQ has no personal knowledge of the testimony which he gave during his deposition that his counsel seeks to have the jury hear."
Your protestations that this testimony is critical to your case are unconvincing to the sympathetic but unapologetic trial judge, who rules: "Counsel, while I appreciate your position, on the authority of LAOSD Asbestos Cases; Ramirez v. Avon Products, Inc. (2023) 87 Cal.App.5th 939 (Ramirez)), the request to preclude the testimony of the PMQ is granted." (See Williams v. J-M Manufacturing Co., Inc. (2024) 102 Cal. App.5th 250.)