Admissions

• Author: Leonard H. Bucklin
• Pages: 249-252

15. Admissions

At trial, you need a place where you can quickly check the admissions you and others

made. This Admissions section is a place for you to put a list or copy of relevant admis-

sions you may want to refer to at trial.

This tab divider will also remind you to check for admissions and use them at trial.

Check for admissions in:

- formal requests for admissions

- pleadings

- interrogatory responses

- depositions

§15.1 Requests for Admissions

Requests for admissions, properly used, can do much. Although pleadings may be

broad without fear of sanctions, unjustified denials to a request for admissions do have

sanctions. In most states you can make a general denial in pleadings as a matter of right,

but you cannot deny a discovery request for admissions unless you have evidence that

creates a real issue on the point requested. As a result, well-crafted requests for admis-

sions can produce significant statements for you to use as proof.

If you served a request for admissions, you probably received back the responding

attorney’s standard ten pages of objections and verbiage. In the verbiage are buried only

two lines of admissions. In your trial notebook section, list only the two lines of admis-

sions you want to go into evidence.

Admissions have to be received into evidence to be evidence. This section’s list will

remind you to make the offer of evidence.

At trial, offer the admissions formally, in open court. It is doubly impressive if done

in a deep and slow voice before the adversary has made a statement of the admission to

the jury. Jurors tend to think of a formal written admission, or a deposition statement of

the admitter contrary to his position, as a sign of weakness in the admitter’s case.

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