testimony

Published on: April 11, 2018

TRIAL TESTIMONY

Prince-Georges-County-Circuit-Court Trial is scary. If you have a trial, and you’ve never been, you probably have some anxiety about the whole thing. Where do I sit? What questions are going to be asked? Can I bring notes?

You will have a long conversation with your lawyer to go over all of this before trial. We’ve been through it before, and we’ll answer all of your questions. There is one thing we need you to prepare in advance: a list of your non-economic damages.

Non-economic damages include the following, according to the Rules (Md. Cts. & Jud. Proc. § 11-108):

Published on: March 7, 2018

HOW TO PREPARE FOR YOUR TRIAL: DISTRICT COURT VERSION

By Posner & Cord, LLC

If your cases has been set for trial, there are some things that you will need to prepare to be ready. What are you preparing for? Simply, to provide the best testimony possible to the judge. That means you need to be ready for the questions your lawyer will ask you, and you need to anticipate the questions that the defense attorney will ask you. These are the steps important for testimony, whether it is an automobile collision case, slip-and-fall, or any other type of personal injury.

Contact your lawyer. Set up a time before the trial to go over your testimony. Our office will use a trial script to help you understand the questions we will ask. Based on our review of your file, including your medical records, our conversations with you, and your answers to interrogatories, we will draft the questions and what we think the answers are. Your job is to review those, make sure they are correct, and help provide as much detail as you can.
Know your medicals. You should review your medical records—preferably, read them all to remind you of what you went through. At the very least, have a good idea of who you went to, for how long, and know about how much they charged you. Reading medical records isn’t the most enjoyable thing, but knowing your medicals will help you to understand your case.

Published on: April 14, 2015

Credibility

By Posner & Cord, LLC

It’s a simple word, credibility. Basically, it means a person’s believability. A person may not be credible because he has a history of lying, or because what he says doesn’t make sense when taken with other more believable facts.

In our recent trial, which was a liability dispute with no independent witnesses (we commonly call these “he-said, she-said” cases, regardless of gender), every single lawyer used the word credibility in opening statement and closing argument. Essentially, we all argued that our clients were credible, that the other side did not testify credibly, and sometimes that the witnesses were somewhat credible. It’s standard fare for a trial.

In a trial, credibility is the most important thing a witness or a party has. If the judge or jury has any reason to doubt that person’s truthfulness on any single point, even something unrelated, that doubt can cast a shadow on every point of that person’s testimony. That’s why some lawyers will fight hard to find a lie or a mis-rembering in testimony. It can be the difference between a win and a loss.