Interrupting lawyer gets rare sanction
SIOUX CITY (AP) – A federal judge in Iowa meted out an unusual punishment to a lawyer for repeatedly raising objections and interrupting depositions: She must produce a training video showing why such tactics are inappropriate.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, her law firm objected to the ruling.
U.S. District Judge Mark Bennett issued the “outside-the-box sanction” last week to Chicago-based attorney June Ghezzi, a partner at the international law firm Jones Day.
Bennett wrote that during pretrial depositions in a lawsuit in which Ghezzi was defending Abbott Laboratories, she “proliferated hundreds of unnecessary objections and interruptions” that appeared to coach witnesses on how to answer questions and delayed the proceedings.