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In this lesson, you will learn common discovery objections, what each of them means, and situations to watch out for to correctly object during the discovery process.
Common discovery objections are
- Irrelevant
- Privileged
- Burdensome
- Vague or ambiguous
- Over-broad
- Conclusory
- Compound question
Transcript
Objections are formal protests of evidence requests during litigation.
You can refuse to answer discovery on the basis of relevance, ambiguity, a claim of privilege, or many other grounds. You\’ll see some of them listed here.
The party requesting discovery from you can then file a motion to compel your responses.
If an objection is not stated in response to written discovery, that objection is waived.
There may be some reason to postpone your objection, but it\’s a good practice in written discovery to go ahead and state all applicable objections.
Within the thirty days or so allowed for a response. If you don\’t file your objections within that period of time, the objection is waived.
Now objections to request for interrogatories, admissions, and production of documents include, as we mentioned, relevance. You might say the request or the question calls for information that\’s not reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence. That means it\’s not relevant. You may also object on the basis that, the information requested is privilege. If the request or the question calls for privileged information. You can object on that basis.
You can object on the basis that a request is unduly burdensome.
If the information requested is obtainable from some other source that may be more convenient or less expensive, you should object that the request is unduly burdensome.
You can object on the basis that the request is overly broad if the question or request lacks specificity, for instance.
Lawyers refer to these types of questions as phishing expeditions.
Where an opponent will request a wide range of documents or information that relates to or pertains to or concerns some broad array of issues, topics or events. That\’s generally considered overly broad.
You may object when the request is vague or ambiguous.
So ambiguous has to be oppressive is the common language there.
The question may lack specificity as to the time, the place, or of the subject matter being requested. And in that instance, you can object on the basis of vagueness.
You may object when a question is conclusory. That is when the question or request seeks an opinion or conclusion without establishing a proper foundation for it. It requires you to assume, what the questioner is assuming, and there may not be proper basis for that assumption.
You can also object when the question is a compound question.
In that instance, the question or the request is actually two or more questions or requests combined into one, and it\’s fair to object to that as compound.