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USING DEPOSITION TRANSCRIPTS AT TRIAL a. Be sure you know the rules. They can be tricky. D.R. Suplee and N. Reimann, "The Deposition Handbook" (5th ed. 2011). b. Depositions can be used to impeach. Fed. R. Civ. P. 32; Fed. R. Evid. 801(d)(1)(A) and 613(b). And see Pa. R. Civ. P. 4020(a)(1); Pa. R. Evid. 803.1(1) and 613(b). (i) Give thought to how you are going to bring the prior inconsistent testimony to the attention of the jurors. One suggestion: rather than reading both questions (Q) and answers (A) aloud yourself (which can quickly become boring) or reenacting what happened at the deposition with you reading the Q and the witness reading the A (where you lose control of how the answers are being read), consider using a blended approach. If, as is often the case, it is the witness's last answer in the deposition excerpt that is most helpful to you, read the Q and A aloud to yourself until you get to the last answer and, at that point, ask the witness to read his answer. That will signal to the fact finder that that is the answer that matters. There is no one right way to do it. Think through what will work best with this witness in this case. c. After you have established that the witness gave contrary testimony at his deposition, what do you do? One possibility is to leave it at that, while giving the witness a look of disappointment. Jurors are not stupid. They will "get it" even if you do not pursue the point further with the witness. The further you pursue it, the greater the danger that your cross will degenerate into a bickering match with the witness, which may obscure the inconsistency you want to highlight. d. Depositions of adverse parties can be used "for any purpose." Fed. R. Civ. P. 32(a)(3); Pa. R. Civ. P. 4020(a) (2). So, if the adverse party gave deposition testimony that helps your case, you need not call them as on cross or wait for them to take the stand at trial to use that helpful deposition excerpt. Instead, you can read into the record the helpful deposition testimony under the cited rules. If you do things that way, it may be days or weeks before the adverse party takes the stand and tries to explain away their harmful deposition testimony. Sometimes opposing counsel will try to frustrate that approach by saying, "Your Honor, Mr. X is here in the courtroom. Since he is available, opposing counsel cannot read in this T wo earlier articles in this magazine offered some selected tips to up-and-coming trial attorneys about various aspects of trial practice. Here are some more examples picking up where they ended in the second article: 24 the philadelphia lawyer Fall 2015 B Y D E N N I S R . S U P L E E TRIAL PRACTICE THE ABCS AND BEYOND (PART 3)