FWIW, I've begun taking discovery against TSA & Covenant. Whee.
Originally Posted by
Boggie Dog
Sai has been been on the attack for years so I would feel better supporting his effort.
I'm glad to be of service.
FWIW, the court in my FOIA case has ordered that I post all the records from the FOIA requests at issue in that case. So, I'll be updating
https://s.ai/foia#tsa within the next week or so with about 5,000 pages of documents, about 4,000 of which are TSA policies & procedures. Many of them never before released.
[Discussion of Moderator action edited per FT Rule 18.]
Originally Posted by
Loren Pechtel
I'm thinking more along the lines of asking for clarification, pretending not to understand etc.
Asking for clarification is perfectly legitimate. It's up to the person asking questions to make sure the question is crystal clear, answerable on its own, without any ambiguity. That does frequently mean having to ask a lot of follow-up questions, start with definitions, cover small variations, etc etc. This is why you see lawyers making a big deal of what seem to be excessively nitpicky distinctions. It's to ensure there's absolutely no wiggle room for the response.
In fact, a deponent asking for clarification is a
cooperative behavior.
The
uncooperative version is when a dpeonent privately "interprets" what you say in a way you don't intend and is unhelpful, doesn't tell you (they're not required to answer something you haven't asked), and answers as interpreted. Then you don't find out until after the fact that they were leaving themselves some weasel room to not-technically-lie.
Pretending not to understand, however, is another thing entirely. That's sanctionable conduct. They're under oath for the whole thing. If they say they don't understand, and they're lying, that's actual perjury for which they can be fined or go to jail, just as much as if they did it on the witness stand — potentially together with their lawyer, if the lawyer was suborning it. Depositions are really really not a joke.
You can be a pain, insist on extreme precision, give a misleading but truthful response, not volunteer info that you know the asker wants but hasn't technically asked, etc… but you had damn well better not
lie. That includes lying about your lack of understanding or knowledge or memory.
It's a pain to prove that someone's lying about their memory or understanding, but it can be done — e.g. noticing their selective amnesia, contradictions, training, prior statements, etc etc — and if a judge finds out about it they will be
pissed.