ABSTRACT
The concept of witness immunity stemmed from the old English common law to encourage witnesses to participate in litigation without fear of retaliating lawsuits from unhappy participants. In the case of Briscoe v. LaHue [1], the U.S. Supreme Court held that trial witnesses are entitled to absolute immunity for their trial testimony. The court noted that ignoring liability for testimony in a judicial proceeding could have the effect of inducing two types of self-censorship:
Witness immunity has also been held to extend to pretrial statements and opinions offered in deposition testimony and advisory reports prepared in the course of litigation [3]. This is a logical extension to include those items the witness has to prepare leading up to his or her testimony.
