Bill,

While I don’t think there is anything that could be done to opposing counsel as a result, in a recent deposition I was midway through a morning of what had been very effective examination of the opposing side when my client, who had attended the deposition, said on a break, “You might want to watch how effectively you destroy his case. Mr. _____ (the witness, not the lawyer) is packing heat.” I dismissed it as a bad joke, but as we started back up I was watching the left side of his suit very carefully and sure enough, the witness I was doing my best to break down was sitting less than four feet across a table from me with the handle of some kind of handgun at chest height just waiting to be used on his least favorite attorney in the room.

Here’s what I did – there may have been better approaches, but I didn’t know what they were – I called for another recess and asked for the opportunity to speak with opposing counsel alone. I told the attorney that I wasn’t comfortable continuing the deposition while his client had a handgun holstered to his chest, and that my client had brought it to my attention and I believed he was uncomfortable with the idea as well, and so unless his client would agree to leave the firearm in his vehicle until the deposition was completed, I was going to adjourn the deposition. Opposing counsel had no idea what I was talking about and said he would check with his client because he did not believe that his client “was a gun man.”

He returned to the room and advised, (Not exactly sure this is a quote, but close enough) “Okay, it turns out he does have a firearm, but that he is licensed to carry it, he is not breaking any laws by having it with him today, and he will not be leaving the gun in his car but that if I wished to adjourn the deposition, neither he nor his client had any objections to that.” I told him that he could consider the deposition adjourned, and assured him that he would have my motion for protective order by the end of the day. This threw opposing counsel into a tail spin – screaming and yelling about how far he and his client had traveled for the deposition, and that he would report me for an ethical violation (not sure what I was being accused of) if I even dared to try and prejudice the court against his client by suggesting he brought the handgun to the deposition to intimidate.

Giving opposing counsel a couple seconds to catch his breath, I responded by encouraging opposing counsel to report any ethical violations he observed myself or other members of the bar committing, but that in this day and age I did not believe that my conduct was inappropriate. I continued, “In fact, if you can tell me one reason why your client is sitting in that room with a firearm other than to intimidate myself or my client, I would be happy to consider completing the deposition.” My colleague responded, “I don’t know, maybe he thinks that there are people out to get him and he keeps the gun on him for protection.” Doing my best to keep a straight face, I asked opposing counsel whether that was supposed to make me feel better or worse and pointed out that if his client did have people “out to get him” such that he needed to have a firearm on him, didn’t he agree we all had the right to know about it in advance so that we too could bring our firearms to protect ourselves from becoming innocent victims of his client’s conflict?

I believe that opposing counsel recognized the absurdity of the situation at that point, because he asked me to give him another opportunity to speak with his client. He returned to the room about five minutes later and advised his client had agreed to place the firearm in his vehicle until the deposition was concluded. His client did so, and the deposition was finished without further incident.