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 United States 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: ‘‘First, witnesses might be reluctant to come forward to testify. And once a witness is on the stand, his testimony might be distorted by the fear of subsequent liability. … A witness who knows that he might be forced to defend a subsequent lawsuit, and perhaps, to pay damages, might be inclined to shade his testimony in favor of the potential plaintiff, to magnify uncertainties, and thus to deprive the finder of fact of candid, objective and undistorted evidence’’ [2].
