What happens at a deposition in a California injury case Answer the question. Then stop.

A deposition is your sworn testimony, taken by the other side's lawyer in a conference room with a court reporter recording every word, and with no judge and no jury. You answer questions about the crash, your injuries, your treatment, and your life before it, and the transcript can be read to a jury later. In a California injury case the examination is limited to seven hours of testimony, it usually takes less, and your own attorney sits next to you the whole time.

A defense medical examination is a different event with different rules, and nothing here replaces the preparation session with your own attorney. The frequently asked questions page covers where a deposition sits in the life of a case.

How a deposition gets set

Code of Civil Procedure section 2025.010 lets any party take the oral deposition of any person, including any party to the action, and the deponent can be an individual or an organization such as a corporation, a partnership, an association, or a government agency. That is why the defense can depose you, and why we can depose the driver, the driver's employer, and the company witness designated to speak for it.

The notice does the work. Under section 2025.220, it has to state the address where the deposition will be taken, the date and the time it starts, the name of each deponent, any materials to be produced described with reasonable particularity, and how the testimony will be recorded, including whether audio or video is being used in addition to the reporter. If you have been asked to bring documents, that list is in the notice and it is worth reading closely, because it tells you what the other side already believes exists.

The room and the seven hour rule

Most depositions in Los Angeles injury cases happen at a law office, not a courthouse. In the room are you, your lawyer, the defense lawyer, and the certified reporter, sometimes a videographer, and sometimes the adjuster. Nobody rules on anything, and the tone is flat and procedural rather than dramatic. Since section 2025.310 allows the deposition officer to attend by remote means and does not require the deponent to be physically present with the officer to be sworn, a share of these now happen by video, with the procedures set by court order or the California Rules of Court.

Section 2025.290(a) limits examination of a witness by all counsel other than the witness's own counsel of record to seven hours of total testimony. Subdivision (b) lists the exceptions: a stipulation, meaning an agreement, between the parties, a deposition of an expert witness designated under the expert discovery statutes, a case the court has designated complex, a case brought by an employee against an employer arising out of the employment relationship, and the deposition of the person most qualified to speak for an organization. For an ordinary crash case, seven hours is the ceiling and four is a common afternoon.

The questions in the order they come

The sequence rarely changes, because the defense lawyer is filling in a form the file already has. Almost none of it is about the impact.

1. The admonitions. You are under oath, answer out loud, say so if you do not understand, tell us if you need a break, are you on any medication that affects your memory today.
2. Background. Address history, education, work history, marital status, children, military service, criminal convictions, other lawsuits and claims.
3. The day itself. Where you were going, how long you had been driving, what you saw first, speeds, distances, lane positions, what you did with your hands and your feet, what was said afterward.
4. The moments after. Whether you got out of the car, whether you told anyone you were hurt, what you said to the officer, whether an ambulance came and why you declined it if you did.
5. Prior medical history. Every previous injury to the same body part, every previous car accident, every chiropractor and physical therapist you have ever seen, and whether you have ever made a claim before.
6. This treatment. Who you saw, in what order, what they told you, what medications you took, what imaging was done, and every stretch of time when you were not treating.
7. Today. What you cannot do now that you could do before, in specifics: the shift you cannot work, the stairs, the sleep, the thing you stopped doing with your kids.
8. Money. Wages lost, hours cut, who can confirm it, and whether you have worked anywhere for cash.
9. The internet. Which social media accounts you have, whether you have posted about the crash, and whether you have deleted anything.

The four answers that cost you money

In the depositions we defend, the harm rarely comes from the facts of the collision. It comes from four habits, all correctable in an hour of preparation.

• Guessing. Asked how many feet away the other car was, most people produce a number rather than say they do not know. That number is now testimony, and an accident reconstruction can be built to contradict it. An honest estimate is fine when you label it as one, and "I don't know" is a complete answer.
• Minimizing. "I'm fine", "it wasn't that bad", "a little sore". People say it out of manners. It gets read to a jury next to a surgical bill.
• Forgetting what is written down somewhere. The old back complaint from 2019, the prior claim, the urgent care visit you did not think counted. Records get subpoenaed, and a forgotten treatment becomes an argument that you concealed it. Tell your attorney everything before the day, and the question stops being dangerous.
• Volunteering. Answer the question that was asked, then stop. Long unprompted answers open subjects the defense had not thought to ask about, and the seven hour clock is theirs to spend, not yours to fill.

One more habit is related to all of them: absolutes. "I never" and "I always" are almost never true, and a single exception turns a true witness into an unreliable one. The gaps question deserves its own preparation, because a stretch with no treatment gets asked about in every deposition. Our post on gaps in treatment explains how that argument is built and how a real reason gets documented.

What objections do at a deposition

Your lawyer will say "objection, form" or "objection, vague" and then, usually, "you can answer". That is not theater. Section 2025.460 makes several objections disappear if they are not made on the spot. An objection to a privilege, meaning a legal protection for confidential communications, or to attorney work product, a lawyer's own preparation materials, has to be timely made during the deposition to be preserved. Errors and irregularities in the manner of taking the deposition, in the oath, or in the conduct of a party, an attorney, the deponent, or the officer are waived unless raised then, and objections to the form of a question or answer are waived if not made at the time.

So the objection protects the record while you answer anyway. The exception is an instruction not to answer, which is used narrowly, most often over a privilege, and which can lead to the questioning party adjourning or moving on and later moving to compel, meaning asking the court to order an answer, under the same section. Where the questioning itself is the problem, section 2025.420 lets any party, the deponent, or another affected person move promptly for a protective order, with a meet and confer declaration, a sworn statement that the lawyers tried to work it out first. The court can order that certain matters not be inquired into, that the scope be limited, or that the deposition not be taken at all.

Your 30 days to correct the transcript

The reporter prepares the transcript and, under section 2025.520, sends notice to you and to all parties who attended that it is ready. You then have 30 days following that notice to change the form or the substance of an answer and to approve or refuse to approve the transcript. If nothing is done in that window, the deposition has the same effect as though it had been approved, subject to any changes you made in time.

Read it. Reporters mishear numbers and street names, and "L4 to L5" and "L4 to S1" are different injuries. Changes you make are noted on the record and the other side sees them, so this is a correction process rather than a rewrite, which is another reason the answers are worth getting right the first time.

When the day looks different

• Your case never gets filed. Most claims settle without a lawsuit, and there is no deposition in a claim that settles with the adjuster.
• The other side wants more than seven hours. They need a stipulation or an order, or one of the exceptions in section 2025.290(b), such as an expert deposition, a complex designation, or an employment case.
• A company is being deposed instead of a person. The organization designates the person most qualified to answer on the noticed subjects, and that deposition is outside the seven hour limit.
• You have a medical condition that makes a full day impossible. That is a protective order question under section 2025.420, raised before the date rather than at the lunch break.
• Your records were subpoenaed. Where a subpoena seeks personal or employment records, section 2025.270 sets a longer lead time, which is the window to raise an objection to the scope of what was requested.

What happens at your deposition

You sit down, you are sworn, and for a few hours a lawyer you have never met asks you about your body, your job, and your history in front of a reporter who writes all of it down. It is not a trap unless you treat it as a performance. The witnesses who do well answer the question asked, say they do not know when they do not know, and describe their limits in plain, specific language rather than in adjectives.

The preparation is the whole of it: a session with your own attorney, the records reviewed beforehand, and every prior injury and prior claim on the table in advance. If a deposition notice has arrived, ask for that session and hold the date. Our guide to filing a car accident claim in Los Angeles shows where the deposition sits in the sequence, and our Los Angeles car accident lawyer page explains how the rest of the case is built. No fee unless we recover.