Impeachment Evidence in Personal Injury: Overcoming Admissibility Issues with Surveillance, Social Media, and More

This CLE course will discuss best practices for counsel to use impeachment evidence at a personal injury trial. In situations where a potential piece of evidence is irrelevant until the trial is underway, attorneys must be confident about bringing evidence before the judge while minimizing its chances of exclusion.

Most state and federal rules of civil procedure only require attorneys to disclose items in discovery that are deemed relevant to the case. Thus, seemingly irrelevant material (for example surveillance or social media posts that appear unrelated to the trial issues), may suddenly become material evidence due to unexpected testimony at a hearing.

In those instances, if counsel discovers that material previously deemed irrelevant has new relevance as “impeachment evidence” in the case, then attorneys risk exclusion of the item and may be seen as trying to ambush their opponent by the trial judge.

Also, issues surrounding authentication and judicial discretion come into play, which may pose threats to the admissibility of potential impeachment evidence. Because of this, attorneys must be very thorough throughout the entire litigation process and anticipate the possible objections and means of overcoming them well in advance of any trial so that any necessary witnesses may be present at short notice to lay a foundation.

Listen as our distinguished panel discusses best practices for anticipating potential pieces of impeachment evidence before trial and how to best posture the evidence to overcome any objections or admissibility issues.