The legal preliminaries necessary to establish the qualifications of a witness
are long and tedious. If the opposing attorney takes issue with the witness's
qualifications or testimony, these objections will usually be discussed outside
of the presence of the jury. First, the jury must be removed from the
courtroom. Then the lawyers and judge spend several minutes discussing the
legal issues involved, and finally the jury is brought back into the courtroom.
The effect is to break up the flow of trial, making the proceedings confusing
and frequently tense.
Testimony is drawn out over a prolonged period. The attorney who calls a
witness asks the first questions. The person is then cross-examined
(questioned) by the opposing counsel. If there are several opposing parties in
the case, the attorney for each of these parties may examine the witness. The
original attorney is then allowed to requestion the witness. The attorneys go
around the circle until each is satisfied that testimony most favorable to
their client has been elicited.
The procedure known as "invoking the rule"--a rule of civil procedure that
allows a party to request that a witness be prevented from hearing the
testimony of other witnesses in the trial--can be distressing to witnesses. The
intent is to prevent witnesses from refreshing their memory or shaping their
testimony to fit other testimony. The rule is particularly frustrating to
physicians acting as expert witnesses. They will be asked to testify about the
validity of other testimony that they are prevented from hearing. Since the
attorneys are free to paraphrase the words of other witnesses, perhaps putting
a different cast on them, the expert may be in the position of condemning
another physician for something the physician did not say or do.
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