Episode 131 -The Question to Ask after “Did You Take Any Medications That May Affect Your Testimony Today?"

In this episode, Garrity points out an important but usually overlooked followup question to ask right after you ask deponents if they took medication that might affect their testimony. Care to guess? (Don't look at the case in the show notes. That's cheating!)SHOW NOTESStanford v. C.R. Bard, Inc, et al., Case No. 121-cv-00576-DDD-SBP, 2023 WL 9024610 (D. Colo. Nov. 9, 2023) (summary judgment granted, and plaintiff’s affidavit stricken, where plaintiff sought to avoid unequivocal deposition testimony by claiming she had stopped taking medication the night before, and that doing so caused her to become distracted and thus misunderstand critical questions; defense counsel asked plaintiff “Have you taken any medication within the last 24 hours that might interfere with your testimony today, like making you sleepy or anything like that?”, but did not ask if she had refrained from doing so, or whether there were other conditions affecting her ability to testify)*The following cases were added after this episode aired:Mims v. Sanofi US Servs, Inc. No. 3:23CV24723-MCR-HTC, 2024 WL 1723515, at *4 (N.D. Fla. Feb. 23, 2024) ("Questions about what medications Mims has taken or is taking as well as questions about her health, however, are not protected by Florida's physician-patient privilege because Sanofi is not asking about any information Mims disclosed to her physicians")