deposition

* A man has won a federal lawsuit against his parents for throwing away “a trove of pornography and an array of sex toys.” Sure hope they kept his baseball card collection… [Michigan Live]

* A Florida lawyer may face suspension from practice for allegedly having sex with and impregnating a client. [Daily Business Review]

* A federal judge has refrained from imposing a monetary penalty on a lawyer who said they are “not dicking around with a rookie” during a deposition. [ABA Journal]

* Vanessa Bryant, wife of late basketball player Kobe Bryant, is being sued by her mother for allegedly not paying her mom for her supposed work as a “longtime personal assistant and nanny.” [Fox News]

* A voting-machine company is demanding that a pro-Trump attorney retract claims made about voting machines made by the business. [ABC News]

* Google is now facing its third antitrust lawsuit. Guess third time’s a charm… [CNN]

Defending depositions is important, so make sure you do it right.

Depositions are important -- and if the fate of many litigators is to be a "deposition lawyer," then one might as well be as good at depositions as possible.

How often do you stop to think about the ubiquitous “Made in China” label? Not as often as you should.

In-house litigator Mark Herrmann offers some advice for outside counsel about depositions.

Based on his videotaped deposition, this retired managing partner could have a second career as a reader of erotic audiobooks.

* The latest update on the law school litigation front represents good news for New York Law School. [National Law Journal]

* Should summarizing a one-day deposition transcript really cost $90,000? Even DLA Piper might blush at such a bill. [Point of Law]

* Ropes & Gray isn’t backing down in the discrimination lawsuit brought by former partner Patricia Martone. (We’ll have more on this later.) [Am Law Daily]

* No, silly polo mogul, you can’t adopt your 42-year-old girlfriend to shield your fortune from litigation. [ABA Journal]

* Replacing “barbers” with “beauty culturists”? This is Indiana and not California, right? [WSJ Law Blog]

Lady Gaga is famous for her music, but now she's being made famous for her abusive deposition testimony.

Wherein our columnist gets called out by one of the outside lawyers he discussed in a recent column....

When it comes to depositions, we really thought that we had seen it all. But we've never seen an attorney drawing dick pics before...

Why do so many people think that you must be a blowhard to be an effective litigator? I’ve recently heard several tales of business folks (or in-house lawyers) worrying that outside counsel is not aggressive enough. What prompts the concern is the lawyer’s performance during a conference call or at a meeting: The lawyer is […]

* Pepsi lawyers offer a creative (if disturbing) defense to a lawsuit by a man who claims he found a mouse in his Mountain Dew. [Madison County Record via The Atlantic Wire] * Will birther queen Orly Taitz get to depose — i.e., “rupture the jurisprudential hymen” — of President Barack Obama? That would be […]

Well, we've got somebody who should be a late entrant into our Lawyer of the Year contest. He is Houston attorney Paul Waldner. He's a partner at Vikery, Waldner & Mallia, which is an arm of Justice Seekers in Texas. He is a man who brings the funny with him to the deposition room. Paul Waldner is a man who asks questions like: "So, your jurisprudential hymen is being ruptured?" Oh, you think I'm joking? No sir, I have video! And really, the witness's answer might have been better than the question....

A story I often tell is about the first time I took a deposition. I got there early, and I thought that the most important thing was to control the witness. I didn’t realize the first time around that the way you control somebody is not by intimidating them. But I adjusted the chair that […]

When is a litigator thinking most keenly about a specific witness's testimony? There are two days: The day you're taking (or defending) the deposition of the witness, and the day -- months or years later, if ever -- when you're examining the witness at trial. So when should you be making notes about the witness's testimony and your reaction to it? What do you use those notes for?

You do not want to mess with Judge Sam Sparks, of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas. We recently wrote about Judge Sparks accusing a lawyer appearing before him of incompetence -- in a harshly worded order that pulled no punches. Judge Sparks has been doling out stinging benchslaps for years, and he's gotten pretty good at it. Last week, Judge Sparks lit more lawyers on fire....

Can we all just get along? A California deposition devolved into a fracas, according to a recently filed lawsuit and additional court documents.

Check out the latest offerings in Sponsored Content: A bar review course for only $1,395. A great solution to your transcript management woes. And now, thanks to this week’s advertisers on Above the Law: American Express BarMax Black Socks IMS ExpertServices Kinney Recruiting (sponsor of the Asia Chronicles) Lateral Link LexisNexis – Juris LexisNexis – […]

One morning last week, I walked past dozens of loyal Apple customers lined up to buy the new iPad 2. I scoffed as I walked by, my old, beat-up iPod nano playing in my ears. I also had the misfortune of walking past the same store later in the evening. A sign in the doorway […]

* Still more benchslappery, this time from the Second Circuit. Professor Nita Farahany wonders whether Judge Gary Sharpe “may have missed a few important days of his genetics class in high school or in college.” [Law and Biosciences Digest] * In other federal judicial news: I’ve never bought into the silly claim that Clarence Thomas […]