Thursday, February 02, 2006

Witch-hunting is part of law practice

I got pissed off today because the first pleading I read was from an adverse party who was asking the court to require my client produce certain originals of documents, and have it presented and copied for the adverse party's use.
You can just imagine the ingenuity of the adverse party of asking the court to let my client produce documents so that these very same documents will be used agasint my client.
If not resisted, it will be a situation where my client will be "magisa sa sariling mantika".
That would have been part of what in litigation is called "discovery procedure."
There was one problem---and this is what really made me nuts---the documents the adverse party was asking from my client were not in my client's possession. And the adverse party knew it.
For instance they were asking from my client for a document that was forumulated, executed by a third person not a party to the case.
So I objected and asked, why not seek this document from the third person himself?
The other document sought by the adverse party was one known to have been given already to another person before.
So I objected and asked again, why not get the document from the person who has custody of such document?
I was aghast because I think the adverse party (or their legal counsel actually) was a lazy boy.
It was obvious they have no evidence on hand.
They wanted my client to produce the document for them and use it against my client.
Absurd? Or plain stupid?

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