Wisconsin Business Law and Litigation
A blog dedicated to Wisconsin business law and business litigation matters, authored by Chris Moander of the Moander Law Firm.

Phew! We’ve briefly covered the topic of depositions, a major component of discovery in a lawsuit. Now, we’ll take a look at “interrogatories.”

Interrogatories
Interrogatories, at the most basic level, are written questions served on the opposing party which must be answered truthfully (as you might guess). They can be served at any stage of litigation prior to trial and so are flexible tools. The key use for interrogatories is to confirm concrete facts, such as dates, locations, times, and names - this allows your attorney to “sharpen” other discovery tools so they can uncover even more details of your case.

Esoteric interrogatories will fail to elicit quality information because opposing counsel almost always formulates the response to the interrogatory, but that is not to say the lawyer herself answers the questions. The party answers the questions and then signs those answers; the attorney ensures that the answers conform to the theory of the case and signs only objections to the questions. As you learned in my last discovery post, depositions do not allow an attorney as much control over a deponent’s response as interrogatories do. Another problem posed by interrogatories is that they offer clues as to the serving party’s strategy, mostly because it takes time and money to formulate quality questions (although there is no explicit limit to the number questions allowed in Wisconsin, Federal rules limit interrogatories to 25 questions) and so questions issued are quite specific and narrow, revealing some strategy to those served.

When your attorney drafts a set of interrogatories, he will likely need your help. Specifically, he may probe your knowledge about people who you think know “things” about your case (these folks could be anyone from a janitor to a highly decorated expert in a field) or what documents might contain information about your case - essentially the same information that would be used to determine who your lawyer should depose.

Of course, if you are served a set of interrogatories, you are obligated to answer them (with the help of your lawyer, of course). Your counsel will mostly likely walk you through each question and discuss the answer with you at length. Timeliness is important (you have 30 days to answer and return the questions), so you will probably need to start working on answers as soon as you can. However, if your answers require lengthy or intensive research, your attorney may require more time to complete the questions and will file motions to extend the time to answer.

It is also important that you and attorney agree that you, as a witness and the person subject to the interrogatories, both understand the answers and can testify to those answers - anything less is dangerous to your case. As with almost all discovery, your answers can be used against you at trial. In the same vein, you will also need to be prepared to dig up documents you may not have already handed over during prior discovery as some interrogatory questions request information best “answered” by turning over a document.

Because interrogatories are subject to a bit more control by your attorney, you will likely feel less immediate stress than from a deposition. However, your answers have a real impact on your case. You should work very closely with your attorney in preparing interrogatories in order to maximize both usage and responses.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 11th, 2008 at 1:00 pm and is filed under Business Litigation, Business Strategy, Lawyer edification. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.