The leaning witness…what it means. 

Hi. I’m Eric Snyder for Snyder Law Group PC. We’re a personal injury firm in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.

Today we’re going to discuss a tactic that defense counsel will try to use during your deposition to ruin your case. It’s called the leaning witness technique, and what they try to do is ask a series of questions in which the answer is going to be yes, and you’re going to start anticipating the answer to be yes, and then quickly, and more rapidly, they’ll ask these questions, and then respond yes, until they slide in a question that you mean to answer no, but now that you’re already leaning and anticipating yes, you say yes.

For example, were you driving down the road that day? Yes.

Were you going the speed limit? Yes.

Were you wearing your seatbelt? Yes.

Was the weather clear? Yes.

Was the light red? No is what you mean to say, but a lot of times, you get caught in such a pattern of yeses, that when they say, “Was the light red?” You say, “Yes.”

And they’ll try to say, you ran that red light and change your entire case just because you were anticipating the question, not listening before you answered.

We don’t want to do that. We try to teach our clients or prepare our clients to listen to the question, understand the question, and answer the question to the best of their ability.

If you want additional information or would like to make an appointment to discuss your case give us a call at 610-265-8050