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Contacting and Compensating a Non-Party/Former Employee Fact Witness

By John J. Weinholtz and Kevin T. Saunders
June 10, 2013

Every good civil trial movie worth the price of admission seems to have as its climax the former employee who has long harbored some dark secret about the employer that is now revealed on the stand years later and that saves the day for the downtrodden plaintiff (and even more downtrodden attorney). Hollywood has repeated this formula successfully through the decades with, as examples, the former operating room nurse providing the true admitting record in The Verdict (1982); the former chemical company employee providing information about chemicals that were dumped into the town's water supply in A Civil Action (1998); and the former gas company employee testifying that he preserved records, against the gas company's direction, showing chromium contamination in the groundwater in Erin Brockovich (2000). While former employees can make for good drama on the movie screen, they can present legal and ethical issues that make for unwanted drama in real world litigation, unless counsel is careful.'

Contacting a Non-Party/Former Employee

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