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Hello everybody. Hi and welcome. I'm Gerry Oginski, I'm a New York medical and malpractice and personal injury attorney. Today I want to share with you today's topic, which is three ways to destroy a witness's credibility at the time of trial. You want to know what this is about? Come join me for a few moments as I share with you some terrific information. Hi. Okay, imagine the scenario. Now you've brought a lawsuit against somebody who was careless causing you significant harm and injury. Let's say, for example, that this involves a claim against your doctor. Thanks so much for the thumbs up, I appreciate it. Let's say this involves a claim against your doctor. You believe that your doctor was careless and as a result of this carelessness, caused you significant harm and injury. Now you bring a lawsuit against your doctor. Well guess what? Now your case goes all the way to trial. You have to go through two or three years worth of discovery to get to the point of trial. You have to go through the whole litigation process. The doctor on the other hand, turns around and says, "Hey, why are you suing me? I did nothing wrong here. I didn't do ... I wasn't careless. Nothing I did caused or contributed to your injuries and by the way, your injuries are really not as bad as you claim them to be." So now, you have a contested issue. You claim your doctor was careless, the doctor says, "No, I wasn't." Now you've got a significant problem. David, nice to see you. Thanks for joining me this morning. Now you have a contested issue. So, how do you resolve this issue. Well, ultimately if the doctor refuses to concent to settle, if he doesn't want to enter into negotiations. Now, your case ultimately will go to trial. So, what does that mean? It means that now you have an obligation to put on whatever witnesses, whatever testimony, whatever evidence you need in order to support your claim that you are more likely right than wrong, that what you are claiming is true. That's how you show that you're entitled to a verdict in your favor. That's a very important point. The defense on the other hand will put on whatever testimony and evidence to support their defenses to argue that they did nothing wrong. One of the key strategies by an attorney ... Hey, David nice to see you. Okay. David nice to see you. Today I'm talking about three different ways you can destroy a witnesses credibility at trial. Thanks for joining me this morning and I'm glad you're here because I'm talking about now a scenario where you brought a civil lawsuit against someone who you believe was careless and that carelessness was a cause of your injury. Now the defense refuses to acknowledge or take responsibility for anything they did wrong. Which means ultimately, your case is going to trial. Thanks so much for the thumbs up, I love it. Love it, love it, love it. That's great. The thumbs up are terrific. Now you have to get to trail. Once you're at trial you have an obligation to show that you are more likely right than wrong. Awesome, awesome thumbs up. Love it, this is great. What do you do? A key agenda for any attorney who now is going after witnesses on the witness stand is to try and destroy their credibility. You have to try... Oh, I love those hearts. Those thumbs up are great, thank you so much. You have to destroy a witnesses credibility or at least attempt to do that. Why? Because you want to show the jury. You want to explain to them that this witness, who now is testifying against you, may be less than credible, may be less than truthful. The only way to do that, to show that this person cannot be trusted is to go after their credibility. So, let me go through with you three different ways. That's the topic of today's video. Three different ways ... there you go one, two, thee to go ahead and show that this witnesses credibility is less than 100% stellar. Here we go, let me get out my trusty notebook. The first one is, we're using pretrial testimony. We call that deposition testimony. You should know a deposition is nothing more than a question and answer session that's given under oath, in your attorney's office. But you should know something very important, it's pretrial testimony and carries the same exact weight as if you are testifying at trial. Even though there's no jury there, even though there's no judge in the room, there is a court reporter in the room to record all of the questions and all of the answers. Here we go. Once that happens, everything that you say in response to a question, that becomes your pretrial testimony. Now, if somebody asks you what happened and now you tell them the answer, that becomes your testimony. Let's say two years, a year down the road, when your case goes to trial and you are asked the same exact question, if you now give a different answer compared to what you gave a year earlier, during your question and answer session in your attorneys office. Guess what? Now you've got two different answers. You've got what appears to be contradictions. You said one thing a year ago, you said another thing right now in front of the jury at trial. That is a crucial way to show that you maybe less than credible in front of the jury's eyes because remember the jury was not there watching and listening and learning about the questions and answers during your pretrial testimony in your lawyers office. Nor do they have the booklet, the transcript of all the questions that were asked and all the answers that you gave. Those questions and answers were put into, they were transcribed and put into a booklet and then you are asked to review that to make sure there were no typographical errors but they don't know anything about that. All they know is that this attorney is getting up to cross-examine you and guess what? Now you give an answer that triggers an alarm bell in the attorneys mind. Now, he takes out this transcript, this booklet and he says, "Hey Mrs. Jones, isn't it true that I questioned you one year ago in your attorneys office?" "Yes, that's true." "And at that time didn't you swear to tell the truth?" "Yes I did." "And at that time when I asked you questions you responded and gave me verbal answers. Isn't that true?" "Yes." "There was a court reporter there to record all of your answers, isn't that right?" "Yes." "And she put all of your answers into this booklet. Isn't that right?" "Yes." "Afterwards your attorney sent you a copy of this booklet. True?" "Yes." "And you were supposed to read it over to make sure that there were no errors in that. Correct." "Yes." "And you did that, didn't you?" "Yes, I did." "And you were told that if you had to make corrections to do it on a separate piece of paper to sign that paper, right?" "Yes." "And you were supposed to sign the booklet too, isn't that right?" "Yes." "And you did that too, right? Excellent. Now this is the booklet that you sent back to your attorney. You see here. Let me show you the signature line. Right there, isn't that your signature?" "Yes." Okay, so what am I doing. I'm setting this witness up to show and highlight the contradiction that's coming in just a moment. I'm establishing for the jury the fact that she gave the answers to these questions a year earlier and now I'm gonna direct her to the exact line and the exact question. "Hey, Mrs. Jones. Isn't it true that on page 18, line seven, you were asked this question." "Yes." "And now, you gave this answer in response to that question. Isn't that true?" "Yes." Now that's gonna be the same exact question that I have just asked her at trial. Now she's given a different answer. I'll tell you something important. I am not going to ask her why her answer is different from a year ago compared to right now. You want to know why not. Let me just straighten my mic. It's because you never, ever on cross examination ask a witness why. You never want to ask a witness why is your answer different. Do you want to know why? It's because, this is really important, it's because the moment I ask why, all the sudden they're gonna give the jury a long winded answer that's going to justify and explain why she gave one answer a year ago earlier during her pretrial testimony and different answer now in front of this jury. So I never ever ... Andy nice to see you. Welcome. Come join us ... I never ever want to go ahead and give the witness that opportunity to go ahead and explain anything during the course of cross examination. That is one key strategy, that's a very important strategy of how to destroy a witnesses credibility at the time of trial. To show contradictions between what she said a year earlier during her pretrial testimony and what she said now in front of the jury. That's a key, key important point. Let's get to point number two. Here's the second way that we can go ahead and try to destroy a witnesses credibility. Again, I'm gonna refer to my handy dandy notebook because when I'm doing these videos, it's critical to make notes so that I don't forget the key strategies I want to get across in these videos to help you understand how these types of cases work here in New York. The second way to destroy a witnesses credibility is to show that they told a little white lie. That's very interesting, isn't it? How can a little white lie destroy someones credibility? Very, very simply. I'm gonna show you in a couple of steps. Let's say, for example, that you were convicted of a crime many years ago. Let's say you did something really stupid and then you paid a price for it. Now, many years later, you got treatment by a doctor and he was careless and he caused you significant harm and injury. Guess what? You now bring a lawsuit against your doctor and the defense turns around and during the course of pretrial questioning, they turn around and say, "Hey, Mrs. Jones. Isn't it true ..." nope they're gonna ask you this way, "Mrs. Jones, have you ever been convicted of a crime?" And you're thinking, "Shoot, you know what, I have been but I'm afraid to tell this lawyer the answer to that question because I'm afraid of what he's gonna think of me. I don't want him to think poorly of me, it'll affect my case." So you decide to conceal that information from him during his questioning. Well, you say, "Of course not. I've never been convicted of anything." Now the attorney continues on and asks you lots of other questions. You think nothing of that. By the way, you had never told your attorney during his preparation session of you about the questions that you were going to be asked. You never mentioned to him the fact that you had been convicted in the past. Now that's a little twist, that's gonna be a problem that's gonna be a problem that's gonna come back and bit you on the butt. I'll tell you exactly how. What you conceive to be ... Hey Kimberly, thanks for joining us. Thank you so much fro coming. Today we're talking about three different ways to destroy a witnesses credibility at trial. The first way was to show contradictions between pretrial testimony, during question and answer session in a civil lawsuit in New York compared to the testimony that she's giving at the time of trial. So, that's really important. We're now onto number two and that ... Hey Kimberly. Hi, how are you? Now we're talking about number two, the second way and that is telling a little white lie. You may say, "What's the big deal? You tell a little white lie and guess what..." Hey, thanks so much for the thumbs up. That little lie ... Michael, nice to see you. How are you? Just to recap, we're talking about three different ways to go ahead and expose someones credibility, actually to destroy their credibility at trial. The first way is with pretrial testimony. To show the contradiction between what somebody said during the course of pretrial testimony, known as a deposition and what they said a year or two later at the time of trial. That's really important, using a deposition transcript. The second one that we're up to now is, let me go back again, it is telling a little white lie. A lot of people think, "What's the big deal? It's a little white lie. Nobody's ever gonna find out. Nobody's ever going to know, so what's the big deal?" I'll tell you what the big deal is. Let's say for example, again, I'm going back to the example I used just a moment ago that you had been convicted of a crime in your past when you were young. You did something stupid and you paid a price for it. Now, 15-20 years later, you suffer harm and injury because of someone else's carelessness. You decide to bring a lawsuit against them. Might be a careless strife, maybe it was a careless doctor. During the course of your pretrial question and answer session the defense attorney has an opportunity to ask you a question. He asks you lots of questions, for hours. One of the questions they're going to ask you is, "Hey, Mrs. Jones. Have you ever been convicted of a crime?" You're thinking, "You know what? What does that have to do, from 20 years earlier, have to do with my claim against my doctor now?" The reality is it has nothing whatsoever to do with it but you feel it's got nothing to do with it, I'm just not gonna tell anybody about it. Nobody's ever going to find out. You decide, "Hey. No, I've never been convicted of a crime." Now the defense attorney moves on and continues asking you lots of other questions. What you just did, is you told a simple little lie. Thinking or believing that no one would ever find out. Guess what? You are 100% incorrect. Objection, that's improper! What you've now, is you've literally destroyed your entire case by telling that little white lie. Let me tell you why. Hey Josh, nice to see you. Thanks for joining us. Josh we're talking about three different ways to destroy a witnesses credibility. We're up to number two, which is telling a little white lie. We're using the example of someone who was convicted of a crime 20 years earlier and now brings a lawsuit against a doctor or careless driver. Now, the defense attorney during pretrial questioning goes ahead and says, "Hey Mrs. Jones, have you ever been convicted of a crime?" And Mrs. Jones says, "Hey you know what? No, I haven't." What she's done is, she's told a little white lie. Let me show you how that little white lie can come back to bite you in the butt. This defense attorney, by the way, he knew exactly whether or not you've been convinced. Kimberly, I love your videos, I learn so much. I'd like to share your videos on my business page if you don't mind. Absolutely. Can I interview you on why an attorney needs to have a legal nurse in your opinion? Absolutely, would love to do that at another time. Reach out to me, send me a private message and I'll be happy to do that. Feel free to share these videos with people on our pages because I think they really need to understand how these types of cases work. Lets get back, and thanks for that information. Let's get back to the information I was just talking about. The defense lawyer, when he's questioning you during your pretrial question and answer session, known as a deposition, he already has the information. Hey Jessie, nice to see you. Thanks for joining. Kimberly, you're welcome. He already has that information about whether or not you were convicted but he's testing you. He wants to see whether or not you are honest enough to answer that question. Now, by the way, you didn't tell your attorney about the fact that you had been convicted, and your attorney ... Hey Jessie, thank you so much. Love your info on your videos. Love the thumbs up, thank you. That's great ... So, you did a disservice to your attorney because you didn't disclose this information to him, nor did he bother to do a proper investigation of you at some point after you started your case ... Thank you, I love those hearts. Love them. They're fantastic, this is great. This is great ... so what happens now is that your attorney is at a significant disadvantage because now he's going to get blindsided. He's not gonna get blindsided right now during pretrial testimony. Instead, it's gonna happen a year down the road at trial. Your credibility is over. You don't realize that that little white lie is gonna destroy you and your case. Love it, love it, love it. Love those thumbs up. Keep them coming. Love those hearts. This is beautiful. This is great. While you're doing that, I'm gonna take an unsponsored water break from Aquafina. They're not paying me, if they'd like to, they're more than welcome to. By the way guys, if you know someone who'd like to sponsor this video, reach out to me send me a private message and keep sending those hearts. This is great! Now, let me show you exactly how to destroy a witnesses credibility at trial when your witness or somebody has told a little white lie. Here's what's gonna happen. You're up on the witness stand, you're testifying on direct examination. Your attorney is asking you lots of questions. Finally, he finishes. It's now time for the defense lawyer to get up and being cross examining you. He's asking you a whole series of nice questions that are not too bad. Then all the sudden he says, "Hey, Mrs. Jones, have you ever been convicted of a crime." You say, "No." The attorney pulls out a document and he says, "Your Honor, at this time I offer this document into evidence and I ask the court to take judicial notice of it." He says, "Show it to your adversary." Now, I hand a copy to my adversary and he looks at it and you just see him go white or he jumps up and he tries to make an objection. What is this document? This is a document confirming the fact that you were number one arrested and charged with a crime, number two that you either took a verdict again and that you were found guilty or you took a plea and now this document is also going to show what your sentence was. Did you serve time? Where were you in prison? Now, he's asking the judge to take notice of the fact that this is an official legal document and he want's the judge to be aware of it. Once the judge becomes aware of it and says, "Yes, the court will take judicial notice of that." What that means is the court recognizes the validity of this document and now accepts the truth of the matter of everything contained in here. All he has to do is show it to the jury. He doesn't have to say anything else if he doesn't want to but he's going to. He's gonna say, "Hey, Mrs. Jones, your name is Jane Jones, isn't that true?" "Yes." "And your birthdate is January 1st, 1942, isn't that true?" "Yes." "Isn't it true that on December 2nd, 1999, you were arrested for criminal possession of drugs, for example." Now there's gonna be a lot of hemming and hawing, objecting, lot of drama going on right now. All he's doing is reading from the document that the court has recognized to be authentic. "Isn't it true that after a trial you were found guilty of possession of this drug?" Now the person has to admit it. "Okay, but now, you just told us a few moments ago that you had never been convicted of a crime. Isn't that true?" "Yes, but let me ex-" "No, no, no. You just told us a few moments ago that you had never been convicted of a crime. This indicates that you were convicted of a crime, true?" "Yes." "In fact, a year ago when I asked you the question during your pretrial question and answer session. I asked you the same question, isn't that true? In fact, the question and answer session that took place on July 5th, a year ago, I asked you the same question, at page 22, line seven. Mrs. Jones, have you ever been convicted of a crime? Answer, no. I asked you that question, you gave that answer. Is that true?" "Yes." So, now what have I done. I have shown in just a few simple steps that this witness lied, that she lied. It doesn't matter why she lied but I've now shown the fact that she has lied. Now, the jury can take into consideration the fact that she has lied. Excuse me one second. Okay. So, that's the second way in which we can go ahead and destroy the witnesses credibility by showing that they told a little white lie. You might not think it's a big deal but it is. Telling a little white lie can destroy everything. You want to know why? At the end of the trial, the judge gives the jury legal instructions that tells them exactly what they need to know about the law in that particular case. There is one key instruction that the judge tells them about credibility. It has a fancy legal term, it's called falsus in uno. What that really means is, listen, hey jury, if you believe that a witness has lied about one little thing, you have the right to disregard all of their testimony. All of it. You can accept part of it, you can disregard some of it. You can disregard all of it but you have that legal right, if you find that a witness has testified falsely about one thing, you can find that they testified falsely about everything. That is so powerful. That is so unbelievably powerful. That's a key strategy on destroying a witnesses credibility. Does that happen often, were we get a witness who hides the fact that they were convinced? No, that doesn't happen often but it does happen once in a blue moon. I just wanted to use that to illustrate to you the fact that this is another key way to destroy a witnesses credibility. I was using the conviction as a way to highlight and illustrate this little white lie. You can use any type of little white lie to show that. You want to always have the documents showing exactly what they were convinced of but once you can show the contradictions, oh my goodness, you can basically destroy their credibility and show the jury that this witness is not to be believed. The next one, I'm going back to my trusty notebook, I wrote down, they lied about a prior criminal conviction. Well that is true but instead of a prior criminal conviction, lets turn it around. Because I already used that example in number two. Instead, let's say that the witness has forgotten something. During the course of being asked questions during her pretrial testimony. "Hey, Mrs. Jones. Isn't it true that when you spoke to my client, Dr. Gold, you told him X, Y, and Z." "Well, I don't remember." "Isn't it true that Dr. Gold gave you this piece of paper to review called an informed concent sheet before going ahead and agreeing to have surgery?" "I don't remember." "Mrs. Jones, isn't this your signature that appears on the bottom?" "Well, it appears to be but I don't ever remember signing that." Now, what have I done? I've gotten the witness to lock herself into an answer, a series of answers. Where she's now told me something about what she does or doesn't remember. A year later, we're at trial. I ask her on cross examination, the same questions. Remember, the jury doesn't know anything about these questions. They don't know what's contained in this booklet. They don't know what questions were asked and what answers she gave. I'm asking these questions and I said, "Hey, Mrs. Jones, do you remember this document?" "Oh yes, of course I do." "Really? You remember reading this document?" "Absolutely." Now the alarm bells are going off in my head. Why? Because she's saying something different than what she said a year earlier. "Mrs. Jones, do you remember signing this?" "Of course I do." What? She told me a year earlier when I questioned her that she had no memory of the conversation between the doctor and her about the concent. About the doctor telling her about all the risks and benefits and alternatives to this particular surgery. Now, all the sudden, a year later, she remembers all this stuff. Remember what I said earlier? You never ask a witness why. Why is their answer different or why, all the sudden, do you remember something now. But instead, I now have to show to the jury that this witness has lied or conveniently changed her testimony. Or some attorneys will say that she's being less than truthful or untruthful and now I have to show them how. It goes back to using her sworn testimony that she gave during her pretrial question and answer session. How do we do that again? "Mrs. Jones, isn't it true that on June 1st, I came into your attorneys office and I had a chance to question you. Isn't that true?" "Yes." "There was no judge there, right?" "No." "There was no jury there, right?" "No." "But there was a court reporter there, right?" "Yes." "The court reporter was there and your attorney was there, isn't that right?" "Yes." "And you had a chance to speak to your attorney before we began that morning, isn't that right?" "Yes." "In fact, your attorney prepared you for the types of questions I was likely going to ask you. Isn't that true?" "Yes." Now it's time for another unscheduled, unsponsored water break by Aquafina. Again, we're using pretrial testimony, pretrial deposition testimony to go ahead and show that the witness is being less than truthful. What are we doing? How are we doing it? I'm locking the witness into testimony to show to the jury that she gave answers to certain questions and this is what she said a year earlier. "No, I don't remember. No, I don't remember. No, that doesn't look like mine, maybe it is my signature, I'm not sure." Now, what did she say here at trial? She said, "Yes, I remember. Yes I signed this. Yes, I talked to the doctor. Here's what I said." Really? Guess what? Obviously they're contradictions, obviously they're discrepancies. There's differences between what she said a year earlier and now what she's saying a trial. Now my job, the attorneys job, is to show and highlight to the jury those discrepancies. I don't care about the reason why. I'm going to imply to the jury that the only reason why the answers are different now, is because she's had time to think about those answers. She's had time to think about the strategies with her attorney that will benefit her and giving her the best outcome by what she says at trial. That's gonna be a key point during closing arguments. Remember, I'm gonna highlight the fact that there are inconsistencies and then I'm gonna drop it and move on. You'll find that the best trial lawyers do not go ahead and beat the witness over ... Thank you so much for those hearts. Love them, keep them coming. Yes, yes, yes. Love those thumbs up. Thank you. This is fantastic. We don't beat them up over the head right then and there while they're on the witness stand, otherwise we're gonna look like a bad guy, the jury won't understand why we're beating up the witness ... Thank you so much for those hearts and those thumbs up. Yes, yes, yes! Excellent. Instead, I wait til the witness is off the witness stand. I wait til closing arguments and now, during closing arguments, I will then highlight to the jury each and every one of those inconsistencies. Then I'll ask them, "How can you believe a witness who's now told you a little white lie? How can you believe a witness who's told you the following inconsistencies? Obviously, they're trying to hide something. Obviously, they're trying to manipulate you." Now, I can imply all sorts of things and the jury will come to their own conclusion. The judge, remember one of the instructions that he'll tell them about is, falsus in uno. If you find that a witness has lied about one thing, you may find that they have lied about other things. Well, that's it for today. Thank you so much, keep them coming! Yes! Hearts, thumbs up, beautiful, beautiful beautiful. Share this video with your friends on Facebook, share them with your family members. Let them see and understand how these types of cases work here in New York. That's it for a beautiful Saturday morning today. I'm so glad you were able to join me on this Facebook live video. By the way, if you're watching this on the replay, then hopefully you're searching for information and this has provided you with a great deal of information to help you understand how these types of cases work. If your matter happened here in New York, and you're thinking about bringing a lawsuit but haven't done so yet because you still have questions that need to be answered. What I invite you do to is pick up the phone and call me. I can answer your legal questions. This is something I do every single day and I'd love to chat with you. You can reach me at 516-487-8207 or my email at Gerry@Oginski-law.com. That's it for today's great video. I'm Gerry Oginski, thanks so much for joining me and thanks for those hearts and thumbs up. They've been wonderful. Keep them coming. Bye bye everybody.