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==History== Depositions by written [[interrogatories]] first appeared around the mid-15th century as a procedure for discovery, factfinding, and evidence preservation in suits in [[Equity (law)|equity]] in English courts.<ref name="Goldstein">{{cite journal |last1=Goldstein |first1=Alan K. |title=A Short History of Discovery |journal=Anglo-American Law Review |date=1981 |volume=10 |issue=4 |pages=257β270|doi=10.1177/147377958101000404 |s2cid=184613750 }} Available through [[HeinOnline]].</ref><ref name="Kessler">{{cite journal |last1=Kessler |first1=Amalia |author-link1=Amalia Kessler |title=Our Inquisitorial Tradition: Equity Procedure, Due Process, and the Search for an Alternative to the Adversarial |journal=[[Cornell Law Review]] |date=July 2005 |volume=90 |issue=5 |pages=1181β1276 |url=https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3001&context=clr |access-date=15 April 2019}}</ref> They differed radically from modern depositions in three ways: (1) the party seeking a witness's testimony merely propounded written interrogatories which were read out loud by a [[Master (judiciary)|master]] or court-appointed commissioner to the witness in a closed proceeding without parties or counsel present; (2) the witness's first-person oral answers under oath were not recorded verbatim, but were summarized by the master, commissioner, or a clerk appointed by them into a third-person continuous narrative; and (3) the resulting written product (also called a "deposition") was filed with the court under seal and its contents were not revealed or "published" to the parties until shortly before trial.<ref name="Goldstein" /><ref name="Kessler" /><ref name="Falvey">{{cite book |last1=Falvey |first1=Heather |editor1-last=Griffin |editor1-first=Carl J. |editor2-last=McDonagh |editor2-first=Briony |title=Remembering Protest in Britain since 1500: Memory, Materiality, and the Landscape |date=2018 |publisher=Springer Nature |location=Cham, Switzerland |pages=81β106 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6oZjDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA85 |access-date=24 October 2021 |chapter=Relating Early Modern Depositions}} Available through SpringerLink.</ref> The modern deposition by oral examination began to develop in New York in the early 19th century when Chancellor [[James Kent (jurist)|James Kent]] of the [[New York Court of Chancery]] allowed masters to actually examine witnesses (that is, pursue lines of questions in real time based on the witness's preceding answers) rather than read static interrogatories (which tended to be broadly worded and resulted in very inefficient depositions). He also allowed parties and counsel to be present during depositions. This meant depositions were no longer secret and led to counsel insisting on taking over the examinations themselves. These developments gradually spread across the United States<ref name="Kessler" /> and Canada.<ref name="Goldstein" /> During the late 19th century, summary narratives by court-appointed examiners were replaced by verbatim transcripts by [[court reporter]]s. Finally, the merger of common law and equity procedure led to the adoption of live testimony in open court as the default method of taking trial evidence in all trials (equity had used depositions by written interrogatories in lieu of live testimony), which reduced the deposition to its modern role in American civil procedure as a discovery and evidence preservation device.<ref name="Kessler" />
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