cbr said:
im not following but sometimes you do that in depo to see if the person really has been there?
dont know.
Well yes, but the point was that the lawyers for Roberts, Epstein, and the two lawyers Dersh accused of defamation were there. So which person was claiming to have been in Dersh's Harvard home and which point were they trying to make?
Dersh admitted that Epstein, having an office at Harvard, had occasionally visited (no sleepovers) with others in Epstein's entourage. So the layout to his Harvard home was germane to someone else for some reason. And in my view, whomever told their lawyer they had been at that home gave the lawyers bad information. Nothing panned out there.
Other observations: having been on both ends of a deposition as the questioner and the deponent, it is very tough deposing a lawyer, particularly one as experienced as Dershowitz. He sees the trap coming after the first few words are uttered. Second, Dersh had some very good lawyers representing him but he too often failed to heed their advice that he was getting too far into waiving attorney-client privilege in his testimony. (Been in that situation where one really wants to answer the question but cannot.)
The fact that Dershowitz was passionate enough to ignore his counsel's advice tells me he truly believes what he is saying. Doesn't mean he's completely accurate but that he's solid in his own mind as to his recollection.
Third, Mr. Scarola's mind-numbingly repetition of the "your having a superb memory," schtick got old very fast. It was amateurish, snarky and ultimately unsuccessful. That is not something you lead with in a question, it is the follow-up after he has said he didn't recall a lot of times. Which ultimately he did not on material issues.
That last observation is a trap into which lawyers often fall, they try to set-up a specific enough question in a deposition to use as later impeachment material for testimony at trial. Throwing that phrase into the antecedent of that many questions had the opposite effect. Dersh didn't take the bait.
Considering the underlying case here was settled sometime after this deposition, I'd say Dersh did just fine. Sure he's under a NDA about the settlement, though.