§ 9-11-26.1.Deposition from officers; protective orders

This section codifies protection for busy executives and officials who get named as deposition targets not because they know anything unique about the case, but because of their title. An “officer” is a current or former high-ranking officer of an organization with unique and extensive scheduling demands or responsibilities, and “organization” reaches beyond corporations to any governmental entity and any other large, complex public or private organization.

Good cause for a protective order blocking that officer’s deposition exists when the movant proves the person is an officer under the definition and lacks unique personal knowledge of anything relevant to the case — and that burden sits with whoever seeks the protective order. The party seeking discovery can still defeat it by showing it has exhausted other reasonable means of discovery and that they proved inadequate, and that the officer does hold unique personal knowledge of one or more relevant matters. Where the officer lacks unique knowledge of some, but not all, relevant matters, the court has a middle option: narrow the scope of the deposition instead of prohibiting it outright.