In June of 2011, I was spoken to by lawyers representing my workplace about a customer who fell in June of 2009. When I was talked to, I had no recollection of the incident even though my name was on their witness list. I reinforced to them that I did not recall the event. Now, January 2012, I was called by the head of Risk Management in my company to tell me I am to appear for a deposition next month, an hour away from where I live. Are there penalties if I do not show? Also, can the deposition be done at my workplace, since I am part time and have other obligations?
If a subpoena was served for the deposition through your workplace, the subpoea is a court order. Disobeying a subpoena may lead to a charge of contempt of court and ultimately could lead to sanctions against you. Even if a subpoena was not served, I would think it would be in your interest to cooperate with your employer's risk manaagement department. If you do not have much information, the deposition will not last long. In regard to the place of the deposition, ask the lawyer requesting the deposition if the deposition can take place at your workplace. (If necessary, ask this through your risk managment department.) It is possible they will accommodate your request.
Most likely, even is a subpoena was issued, the must take the deposition within a certain number of miles of where you live or work. You should contact the appropriate person at your company and ask to speak to the company's lawyer about the deposition and confirm that the lawyer will be representing you at the deposition as well as the company. If the company's lawyer will not be representing you, you should ask if the company will pay for a lawyer to represent you, which many companies will do. It would be somewhat odd for a company not to have a lawyer assist in preparing you to testify at a deposition in a case in which the company was involved. Definitely get more information about what is happening from your company.
As indicated in other answers, if you have been subpoenaed to testify, you must attend or run the risk of being held in contempt. However, reading between the lines of your question, this appears to be a situation where your company is a defendant in a personal injury lawsuit. For whatever reason, your company has listed you as a witness, and it appears that the plainitff's attorney is looking to take your deposition to see what you know or recall. You should talk to your Risk Management supervisor, but it is likely that the company's lawyer with be representing you at the deposition. It is common for lawyers to try to accomodate witness schedules for depositions. Your Risk Management supervisor or the company's attorney should be able to give you some guidance on this, and I would expect that they would want to sit down with you to prepare you for the deposition before it happens. Good luck.
Assuming this lawsuit is in Connecticut under our state laws, the rule is that if you are not a party to the suit, you cannot be compelled to a deposition, unless you are served with a subpoena. If you are served with a subpoena, and you are not from Connecticut, you can be deposed at any place within the county in Connecticut in which you were served. If you are from Connecticut, the deposition can be anywhere in the county where the lawsuit is pending, or withing 30 miles of your house. However, even if you are not a party to the suit (a plaintiff or a defendant) you may have been designated by your company (who is a defendant) as a person with knowledge. If you are a person with knowledge, then your company should attempt to make a reasonable accommodation for you, but they will want you to testify on their behalf. A company, after all, can only testify through it's employees. In this capacity you may be deposed anywhere within the county of suit or within 30 miles of your home. If you haven't been subpoenaed and you refuse to be deposed, there is really no penalty to you, but your employer may have issues with your noncooperation. If you are subpoenaed and don't attend, the court may issue what is called a Capias, which is a type of arrest warrant to bring you before a judge and determine whether and to what degree you personally should be penalized for failing to cooperate with what is essentially an order of the court.
Were you served with a subpoena requiring your appearance? Or is this simply a request from your employer's risk management department? Both merit serious consideration of your options, but those are two far different matters for concern. And whose witness list are you on, that of the customer who fell, or on your employer's list? You want to keep your employer happy, but there's far less concern for the customer.
If you were served with a deposition subpoena, that is a valid court order, even though it is probably signed by a lawyer and not by a judge, and if you ignore it, the lawyer that issued it can go into court and request that a judge find you in contempt of court and order you to appear. The courts allow the lawyers to issue subpoenas in their (the court's) name, but they don't like to see lawyers trying to use court orders to try to bully citizens (who vote for judges). if you fail to obey that second court order that is in fact signed by a judge, then in theory you could be arrested and fined. However, as a practical matter, the lawyer issuing the subpoena doesn't want to incur the time and expense of going to court trying to get a judge to sign a court order compelling your appearance. The lawyer just wants to know that you have to say about this accident, especially if it would be helpful to his client's case. So your job is to convince him that he's barking up an empty tree, and to also leave a paper trail to show that he has been unreasonable in how he went about it. Your risk management department and their insurance company's lawyers should be assisting you in this fight, but if you have to do it yourself, here's how to proceed.
Let's assume that this subpoena is from the customer's lawyer, and that you were served, either personally or by "by publication" (registered maili to your home, or serving an adult at your home and then then following up by regular mail). Leaving it with someone else at your place of work doesn't count. That lawyer probably thinks that you are either afraid to say something harmful to your employer, or that you simply don't want to be bothered attending a deposition. Both are probably true, but that doesn't get you out of it. What can get you out of it, howwever, is the truthful statement that you didn't see anything or at least have absolutely no recollection of seeing anything. You need to tell your risk management people that fact, and offer to sign a declaration under penalty of perjury that says exactly that. In fact, they or their lawyer should draft up such a declaration for you. If the RM people just refuse to assist you in this, and they should be fighting for you, then tell them what you intend to do - which is, you pick up the telephone (in their presence if they wish, I sure would want to know what my employee is telling the other side!) and call the lawyer that issued the subpoena and tell him or her that you know NOTHING about any alleged fall, and that you want them to withdraw the subpoena. Then write them a letter that says exactly that, and mail it to them by registered mail. If that course of conduct doesn't get them to withdraw the subpoena, then send them another registered letter, "signed under penalty of perjury" again explaining that you do not remember ANYTHING about this alleged incident, explaining why this noticed deposition is terribly inconvenient, and again asking that it be withdrawn, but if not, asking that the deposition by taken at your place of employment, at a time convenient to you.
The real reason that you are doing all this and leaving a paper trail is to have something to show the judge, if they won't withdraw the subpoena and you don't show up, and they then have to go into court to try to he judge will try to figure out which is the unreasonable one, you or the lawyer? You should win that one!
If you are on the company list, your employer should provide you with a lawyer, transportation, and time off with pay to attend.
