Going to the Top: The Apex Doctrine and Deposing High Level Executives

If you are injured by a business, or on business property, once your injury lawsuit is filed, your injury attorney may want to take depositions of those in the company that may have knowledge about your accident, or about the dangerous condition on their property that caused the accident.

Lower and Higher Level Executives

In most cases, the people who know the most about accidents or maintaining safe premises are lower level people—managers or employees of individual stores. For example, if you fell in Target, the Target store manager and certain employees may know about how the store is cleaned, how often it was inspected, or what they found right after your fall.

But the higher level executives, like, in our example, Target’s CEO, know little or nothing about these things. He or she is in a corporate office somewhere, and the company CEO doesn’t have any idea what a particular store’s policy may be, when it comes to things like inspecting or mopping or stacking shelves—the day to day operation of a store.

So Why Depose a CEO?

Despite the fact that the CEO or similar senior corporate executive may not know these things, that doesn’t stop people from wanting to depose them.

The problem is that these depositions are often done to harass. For example, if someone knew that they could force Target’s CEO to sit for deposition, every lawsuit against Target would be asking the CEO to do that. Having the CEO sit for deposition, would become more of a harassment tactic, instead of a genuine search for knowledge or evidence about the case.

The Apex Doctrine

This is why courts around the county, including Massachusetts, have developed the Apex Doctrine. The Apex doctrine says that in any case (including but not just limited to personal injury or accident cases), someone cannot just sit a higher level corporate executive for deposition.

Before depositing such an individual, the party seeking the deposition, must show that the individual has some knowledge related to the case, and something to offer in deposition that would be evidence in the case.

Before deposing a CEO or owner of a company, the party seeking deposition must show that the information needed, can’t be had in ways other than deposing the executive. So, for example, if you wanted to know the cleaning and inspection schedule for the aisles in Target stores, you don’t need the CEO for that—you can get that in other ways, whether through documents, or deposing lower level executives.

You Can Depose a High Level Executive

That’s not to say that you can’t ever depose a CEO—you can, especially in smaller companies, where higher level executives may have more direct knowledge as to the day to day operations of a business.

And even in large companies, if the case is something that a CEO may have knowledge about, he or she can in fact be deposed—you just may need the judge’s approval in advance, before you’re able to take this kind of deposition.

Who has information about your accident or your injury case? We can help. Call our Boston personal injury lawyers at The Law Office of Joseph Linnehan, Jr. today at 617-275-4200 to see what evidence is needed in your case.

Sources:

esquiresolutions.com/tech-titans-invoke-and-grow-apex-deposition-doctrine/

jdsupra.com/legalnews/the-apex-doctrine-and-the-c-suite-8813387/