Alabama Personal Injury Trial Part Four – Cross-Examination
Cross-examination is when we as lawyers get to ask leading questions of the defendant or an otherwise hostile witness. When you get to this point of the trial, you will notice that almost all of the questions (in reality, it should be all of the questions) are closed ended questions and that the only appropriate answer is "yes,” "no," "I don’t remember," or "I don’t know."
You should not see any questions which are open-ended questions such as “Why were you driving at that speed?” or “Why was your truck overloaded?” Instead, the questions will be more along the lines of – “Your truck was overloaded” or “You were going over the speed limit when you crashed your truck into my client’s car”. The defendant truck driver will either have to admit that this is true or deny it.
A question will not be asked in cross-examination unless we have the ability to show that a denial of the question is a false answer.
When you are being cross examined, it is very tempting to want to fight with the lawyer and argue with the lawyer, but this should be avoided. Our series on ways to answer questions and depositions addressed this, particularly the fourth critical aspect of answering questions which discusses that you should only answer the question and nothing more.
Cross-examination is a very important part of the trial as this is where the lawyers are allowed to test the truthfulness of witnesses on the other side.
Our next blog post will address Closing Argument.
