Hawaii Certificate of Service of Defendant's Response to Plaintiff's First Request for Answers to Interrogatories

Written questions submitted to a party from his or her adversary to ascertain answers that are prepared in writing and signed under oath and that have relevance to the issues in a lawsuit.No party can be compelled to answer interrogatories that involve matters beyond the party's control.

Interrogatories Interrogatories are written questions that are sent by one party to another. Generally speaking, the party who receives these questions has 30 days to answer them.If the other party fails to respond on time, within 30 days, then the questions are deemed admitted.

Similar to responses to Requests for Production, responses to Requests for Admissions do not have to be verified. It is critical to respond to Requests for Admissions because failure to respond results in the requests being deemed admitted without the need for a motion to have the responses established as admitted.

So, can you refuse to answer interrogatories? The answer is, no, you may not.That answer must either permit inspection of the requested information or object to the production of the information for a specific reason.

Requests for Admission Are Part of DiscoveryRequests for admission allow one party to ask another party to admit or deny certain statements while under oath. That way, admitted statements can be considered true during the trial.

In law, interrogatories (also known as requests for further information) are a formal set of written questions propounded by one litigant and required to be answered by an adversary in order to clarify matters of fact and help to determine in advance what facts will be presented at any trial in the case.

A request for production is a discovery device used to gain access to documents, electronic data, and physical items held by an opposing party in a legal matter. The aim is to gain insight into any relevant evidence that the opposing party holds.

When responding to Requests for Admissions, remember to answer as follows: Admit: If any portion of the Request for Admission is true then you must admit to that portion of the request. You are also allowed to have a hybrid response admit the part of the request that is true while denying another part.

It is possible to object to all or part of a request as well, but courts do not like parties who play word games to avoid responding.A responding party can qualify an answer or deny only a part of the matter of which an admission is requested, and admit the remainder of the request.