Objection (United States law)


In the law of the United States of America, an objection is a formal protest raised in court during a trial to disallow a witness's testimony or other evidence in violation of the rules of evidence or other procedural law. An objection is typically raised after the opposing party asks a question of the witness, but before the witness can answer, or when the opposing party is about to enter something into evidence. The judge then makes a ruling on whether the objection is "sustained" or "overruled". An attorney may choose to "rephrase" a question that has been objected to, so long as the judge permits it. Lawyers should make an objection before there is an answer to the question.

Objections in general

An attorney may also raise an objection against a judge's ruling, to preserve the right to appeal that ruling. Under certain circumstances, a court may need to hold some kind of pretrial hearing and make evidentiary rulings to resolve important issues like personal jurisdiction, or whether to impose sanctions for extreme misconduct by parties or counsel. As with trials, a party or their counsel normally raises objections to evidence presented at the hearing in order to ask the court to disregard impermissible evidence or argument, as well as to preserve such objections as a basis for interlocutory or final appeals from such rulings.
Objections are also commonly used in depositions during the discovery process to preserve the right to exclude testimony from being considered as evidence in support of or in opposition to a later motion, such as a motion for summary judgment.

Exceptions

Historically, at trial, an attorney had to promptly take an exception immediately after an objection was overruled in order to preserve it for appeal, or else the objection was permanently waived. In addition, at the end of the trial, the attorney had to submit a written "bill of exceptions" that listed all exceptions he intended to appeal on—which the judge then signed and sealed, making it part of the record to be reviewed on appeal.
The bill of exceptions was a relic of the early English practice in which parties submitted their pleadings orally and the court ruled on those pleadings orally, and the court clerk recorded what had transpired in summary form in the written minutes of the court. Early on, English trial courts developed the habit of evading appellate review of their rulings by having their clerks not record certain rulings which overruled or disallowed various issues raised by the parties. Parliament solved that problem with the 31st chapter of the Statute of Westminster 1285, which forced trial court judges to apply their court's seal to a party's written bill of exceptions and in turn allowed the bill to become part of the appellate record.
After modern American courts began to use court reporters to create accurate, comprehensive, and verbatim written transcripts of their proceedings, lawyers and judges came to recognize that exceptions were unnecessary because the objection itself and the context of the surrounding record are all the appellate court really needs to resolve a disputed issue. Starting in the 1930s, exceptions were abolished in the federal courts and in many state courts as well. For example, California technically did not abolish exceptions, but merely rendered them superfluous by simply treating just about every ruling of the trial court as automatically excepted to. Thus, in nearly all U.S. courts, it is now sufficient that the objection was clearly made on the record.

Continuing objection

A continuing objection is an objection an attorney makes to a series of questions about a related point. A continuing objection may be made, in the discretion of the court, to preserve an issue for appeal without distracting the factfinder with an objection to every question. A continuing objection is made where the objection itself is overruled, but the trial judge permits a silent continuing objection to that point so that there are fewer interruptions. An example of this is when a lawyer could be held negligent for not objecting to a particular line of questioning, yet has had previous objections overruled.

List of objections

Proper reasons for objecting to a question asked to a witness include:
A few of the foregoing objections may also apply to the witness's response, particularly hearsay, privilege, and relevance. An objection to form — to the wording of a question rather than its subject matter — is not itself a distinct objection reason, but a category that includes ambiguity, leading, compounding and others. Court rules vary as to whether an "objection to form," by itself, preserves the objection on the record or requires further specification.
Proper reasons for objecting to material evidence include:
Proper reasons for objecting to a witness's answer include, but are not limited to:
An objection that goes beyond stating a proper objection reason, as listed above, is known as a speaking objection. Courts normally discourage speaking objections and may sanction them when they impede legal process, whether by delaying the proceedings or by adding non-evidentiary material to the record. The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure require objections during a deposition to be stated "concisely in a nonargumentative and nonsuggestive manner." Speaking objections nonetheless occur in practice and are sometimes used, with caution, to communicate the nature of the objection to a party without a legal background.