Objectionable, not privileged: when you cannot instruct your client not to answer
Your client almost certainly has to answer, because an instruction not to answer is proper only where the matter is privileged or the examination has reached the point where suspension is warranted. The question practitioners ask about most, what the plaintiff intends to do with the money, has no California decision on it in either direction, so the objection is real but it has to be assembled rather than cited.
- The general rule
- Irrelevance alone will not support an instruction not to answer Stewart v. Colonial Western Agency, Inc. (2001) 87 Cal.App.4th 1006, 1015, disapproved on another ground in Maniago v. Desert Cardiology Consultants' Medical Group, Inc. (2026) 592 P.3d 719
- When you can instruct
- Privilege, or the examination has reached a stage where suspension is warranted Stewart, 87 Cal.App.4th at 1015. Privacy and an existing protective order limit are the other two grounds practitioners rely on, and neither is stated in the statute
- Objections you can skip
- Competency, relevancy, materiality and admissibility are "unnecessary and are not waived" by saying nothing CCP 2025.460(c)
- Objections you lose
- Privilege and work product are waived unless a specific objection is made at the deposition CCP 2025.460(a). Form and manner are waived under (b)
- What will you do with the money
- No California case decides it either way. The objection is relevance, privacy and the collateral source rule, and none of the three has been applied to this question in a published decision
- Immigration status
- In a personal injury or wrongful death action, discovery is not permitted at all Evid. Code 351.2(a)
- Sexual conduct
- Needs a noticed motion and specific facts showing good cause before it can be asked CCP 2017.220(a), and sanctions are mandatory on the loser under (b)
- The remedy for harassment
- Demand suspension, then move for a protective order. Not an instruction CCP 2025.470 and CCP 2025.420
On this page
When you can instruct, and the ground that does not count
The rule comes from a case, not from the statute, and the case says the quiet part out loud.
CCP 2025.460 tells you which objections are waived and which are preserved. It does not say when counsel may instruct a witness not to answer. Stewart v. Colonial Western Agency, Inc. (2001) 87 Cal.App.4th 1006 supplies that, at page 1015:
"Taken as a whole, these provisions clearly contemplate that deponents not be prevented by counsel from answering a question unless it pertains to privileged matters or deposing counsel's conduct has reached a stage where suspension is warranted."
And, directly on the objection people actually make:
"Moreover, even were the questions designed to elicit irrelevant evidence, irrelevance alone is an insufficient ground to justify preventing a witness from answering a question posed at a deposition."
One more wrinkle in reading Stewart against the current code. The opinion quotes former CCP 2025(n), because the whole of former section 2025 was reorganised into CCP 2025.010 and following, operative 1 July 2005. The reasoning carried over intact. The subdivision letters did not.
Two further grounds are relied on in practice and are worth knowing for what they are. An instruction to protect a right of privacy rests on article I, section 1 of the California Constitution rather than on the Discovery Act. An instruction to enforce an existing protective order rests on the order. Neither appears in Stewart's sentence, and a court that reads Stewart literally may treat privilege and suspension as the whole list. If the privacy interest is the real objection, the safer route is to suspend and move rather than to instruct and wait to be tested.
What the statute does do is sort your objections into three piles.
| Objection | What happens if you say nothing |
|---|---|
| Privilege and attorney work product | Waived. Protection "is waived unless a specific objection to its disclosure is timely made during the deposition." CCP 2025.460(a) |
| Form of the question, manner of taking, the oath, conduct | Waived if curable and not promptly raised. CCP 2025.460(b) |
| Competency, relevancy, materiality, admissibility at trial | Preserved. These objections "are unnecessary and are not waived by failure to make them before or during the deposition." CCP 2025.460(c) |
That third row is the one worth internalising. Saying "objection, relevance" at a California deposition preserves nothing, because nothing was at risk. It is not harmful, and it does signal to the other side that you are paying attention, but it is not doing the work people think it is doing. The objections that are actually at risk are privilege, work product, and form.
The sentence in subdivision (b) that sets up the whole procedure
The last line of CCP 2025.460(b) reads: "Unless the objecting party demands that the taking of the deposition be suspended to permit a motion for a protective order under Sections 2025.420 and 2025.470, the deposition shall proceed subject to the objection."
Read that as the default rule it is. Objection made, deposition continues. The only thing that changes the default is a demand for suspension, and the statute names the two sections under which you then have to move.
"What are you going to do with the money?"
No California decision addresses it. That is not a gap in the research, it is the state of the law, and a page that pretended otherwise would be the kind of page this site exists to replace.
There is no published California case holding that a defendant may ask a plaintiff how they intend to spend a recovery, and none holding that a defendant may not. There is also no published California case holding that a plaintiff's own net worth or personal financial condition is undiscoverable in an ordinary personal injury case. Anyone who tells you there is should be asked for the citation.
So the objection gets assembled from three pieces, and it is worth knowing how strong each one actually is.
| The piece | What it gives you, and what it does not |
|---|---|
| Relevance, CCP 2017.010 | Discovery must be "relevant to the subject matter" and either admissible or "reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence." Intended future spending is not an element of any damages claim. Strong in principle, and undecided in application. |
| Privacy, Cal. Const. art. I, sec. 1 | Personal financial affairs are a recognised privacy interest. But under Williams v. Superior Court (2017) 3 Cal.5th 531, 557, the burden sits on you to establish the interest's extent and the seriousness of the invasion, and the court then weighs the other side's countervailing interests. |
| Collateral source | A plaintiff's independent resources do not reduce a tortfeasor's liability. Helfend v. Southern Cal. Rapid Transit Dist. (1970) 2 Cal.3d 1. This is about wealth the plaintiff already has, not about plans for money not yet received, so it is an analogy rather than a direct hit. |
The practical answer, then. The question is objectionable and the objection is worth making, on the record, as relevance and privacy. Your client still answers, because Stewart says irrelevance is not a ground to instruct, and "what will you do with the money" is a relevance objection wearing a privacy coat. If the questioning goes past one or two questions and turns into a tour of the plaintiff's household finances, that is when it stops being an objection and starts being a suspension.
Why the collateral source analogy is weaker than it looks after Howell
Howell v. Hamilton Meats & Provisions, Inc. (2011) 52 Cal.4th 541 held that an insured plaintiff recovers no more than the amounts actually paid by the plaintiff or the insurer, not the negotiated rate differential between the billed charge and the discounted amount accepted as full payment.
Howell was careful about what it was doing: "we do not alter the collateral source rule as articulated in Helfend and the Restatement. Rather, we conclude that because the plaintiff does not incur liability in the amount of the negotiated rate differential ... it simply does not come within the rule." So the rule survives intact, applied to what was actually paid.
The point for this page is narrower. Once a defendant can argue that the measure of damages tracks amounts actually incurred, a defendant has a foothold for arguing that some financial facts about the plaintiff are relevant. That is a long way from spending plans, and it is why the collateral source rule belongs in the argument as support rather than as the argument.
The questions that do have a statute behind them
Four categories where the answer is not "object and answer," because the Legislature or the Supreme Court got there first.
| Subject | The rule, and the authority |
|---|---|
| Immigration status | In a civil action for personal injury or wrongful death, "evidence of a person's immigration status shall not be admitted into evidence, nor shall discovery into a person's immigration status be permitted." Evid. Code 351.2(a). Outside that setting, for enforcement of state labour, employment, civil rights, consumer protection and housing laws, no inquiry is permitted unless the asker shows by clear and convincing evidence that it is necessary to comply with federal immigration law. Civ. Code 3339, Lab. Code 1171.5, Gov. Code 7285. See Manuel v. Superior Court (2022) 82 Cal.App.5th 719. |
| Sexual conduct with anyone other than the alleged perpetrator | In an action alleging sexual harassment, sexual assault or sexual battery, the party seeking it must "establish specific facts showing that there is good cause," by noticed motion with a meet and confer declaration, and it cannot be sought ex parte. CCP 2017.220(a). Monetary sanctions are mandatory against whoever unsuccessfully makes or opposes the motion, absent substantial justification. CCP 2017.220(b). |
| Tax returns | Privileged, by implication from the statute barring government disclosure. Webb v. Standard Oil Co. (1957) 49 Cal.2d 509. The privilege yields only on intentional waiver, where the gravamen of the suit is inconsistent with it, or where a legislatively declared public policy outweighs confidentiality. Schnabel v. Superior Court (1993) 5 Cal.4th 704. |
| A defendant's net worth, before trial | No pretrial discovery of a defendant's profits or financial condition in a punitive damages case without a court order, on a showing of a substantial probability of prevailing. Civ. Code 3295(c). The purpose is to protect financial privacy and stop the discovery itself being used to force settlements. Kerner v. Superior Court (2012) 206 Cal.App.4th 84. |
Notice what the fourth row does to the first section of this page. A defendant asking a plaintiff to open up their finances is asking for something California protects carefully when the shoe is on the other foot. That asymmetry is a good argument. It is an argument, not a holding, and no case has made it.
Tax returns are the one place an instruction is comfortable
Because Webb and Schnabel frame the protection as a privilege rather than as a relevance or privacy limit, it fits inside Stewart's first ground without any argument about whether privacy counts. If the question calls for the contents of a return, instructing is defensible.
The exceptions are narrow. Weingarten v. Superior Court (2002) 102 Cal.App.4th 268 required, before compelling a defendant's returns in punitive damages discovery, that the defendant have refused to produce relevant non-privileged financial records or produced only meaningless and unreliable ones, have engaged in a pattern of obstruction likely to continue, and that less intrusive methods have failed. A finding of punitive damages liability alone does not do it.
A section number that does not exist
There is no Code of Civil Procedure section 2017.310. It surfaces occasionally in research output and in AI-assisted drafting as the immigration status discovery statute. The real citations are Evidence Code 351.2 for injury and wrongful death cases, and Civil Code 3339 with its Labour Code and Government Code parallels for the state law enforcement categories.
Related and easy to confuse: Civil Code 3339.10 is a separate, narrower housing provision, and it is not the general rule.
Suspending, and the motion that has to follow
The demand is yours to make, the officer has to honour it, and then the clock is on you.
- State the objection on the record and identify the ground. Relevance and privacy for a finances question, and be specific rather than reciting a list.
- Give them a chance to move on. One offensive question is an objection. A line of them is a pattern, and the pattern is what you will be describing in a declaration.
- Demand suspension. CCP 2025.470 provides that the deposition officer may not suspend without the stipulation of all parties present unless a party or the deponent "demands that the deposition officer suspend taking the testimony" to enable a motion for a protective order "on the ground that the examination is being conducted in bad faith or in a manner that unreasonably annoys, embarrasses, or oppresses that deponent or party." Use those words.
- Move under CCP 2025.420. Available before, during or after a deposition, and the motion must carry a meet and confer declaration. For good cause the court may make any order justice requires to protect from "unwarranted annoyance, embarrassment, or oppression, or undue burden and expense," including limiting the scope, barring inquiry into certain matters entirely, or terminating the examination.
The mirror image is worth calendaring from the other side. CCP 2025.480 lets the party who wanted the answer move to compel it, and subdivision (b) requires that motion no later than 60 days after the completion of the record of the deposition, with a meet and confer declaration. That is 60 calendar days, triggered by completion of the record rather than by the session date, and no service-method extension applies to it because it does not run from service of a document.
Where questioning crosses from aggressive into abusive, CCP 2023.010 defines misuses of the discovery process to include persisting, over objection and without substantial justification, in seeking information outside the scope of permissible discovery, and using a discovery method in a manner or to an extent causing unwarranted annoyance, embarrassment or oppression. CCP 2023.030 supplies the menu, from monetary through issue, evidence, terminating and contempt sanctions.
Now the part that decides whether any of this is worth doing, which is not in the statute.
Sanctions for abusive questioning are rare. Counsel has to be well outside the lines, and usually more than once, before a court will do anything about it. One ugly hour in a deposition is not a sanctions motion, however it felt at the time.
The larger point is about where you want to be standing. Courts do not want to hear about discovery disputes. Reaching the point where a judge has to referee your deposition is itself a bad sign, and it tends to be read as a failure by both sides rather than a win for whoever filed first. Most of this you should be able to handle in the room.
Which is the real reason to know the rules on this page cold. Not so you can suspend, but so that the other side's behaviour does not get you off your game. Knowing that your client answers, that the relevance objection is preserved either way, and that the privilege objection is the one that actually has to be made, lets you sit through a bad question without treating it as an emergency. Rarely should one side's conduct be allowed to change how you try your case.
The same questions, in writing
Written discovery removes the hardest problem on this page, because there is nobody sitting in a chair being asked to answer now.
An interrogatory or a request for production asking what the plaintiff intends to do with a recovery gets an objection and no substantive answer, and the burden then sits on the propounding party to move. That is the opposite of the deposition posture, where the burden of interrupting sits on you.
The grounds are the same ones assembled above, and CCP 2017.020(a) adds a limit worth pleading in terms: the court "shall limit the scope of discovery" if the burden, expense or intrusiveness "clearly outweighs the likelihood that the information sought will lead to the discovery of admissible evidence." A protective order motion under that section also needs a meet and confer declaration.
What breaks if you get this wrong
The asymmetry on this page is unusual. The mistakes that hurt most are the ones made by the lawyer trying to protect the client.
Instructing the client not to answer because the question is irrelevant
Stewart, 87 Cal.App.4th at 1015: "irrelevance alone is an insufficient ground to justify preventing a witness from answering a question posed at a deposition." The other side moves to compel under CCP 2025.480, the answer gets given anyway, and CCP 2023.010 and 2023.030 put the cost of the second session on you.
Letting a privilege question go by without objecting
CCP 2025.460(a): protection on privilege or work product grounds "is waived unless a specific objection to its disclosure is timely made during the deposition." This is the one on this page that does not come back. The irony is exact: the objection people skip is the one that matters, and the objection people make loudly, relevance, is preserved under (c) whether they make it or not.
Announcing you are stopping the deposition without demanding suspension
CCP 2025.470 conditions the officer's power to suspend on a demand to suspend "to enable that party or deponent to move for a protective order under Section 2025.420" on the bad faith or unreasonable annoyance ground. Walking out is not the same act, and the transcript is what the judge will read.
Asking a plaintiff about sexual conduct without the order
CCP 2017.220(a) requires the noticed motion and the good cause showing before the discovery, and (b) makes monetary sanctions mandatory against a party who unsuccessfully makes or opposes it absent substantial justification. This is the rare category where the questioner, not the objector, carries the risk.
Defending the deposition
- Prepare the client for the offensive question rather than planning to block it. Tell them it may be asked, that you may object and they may still answer, and that answering is not agreement.
- Object specifically on privilege and work product, every time, because that is the objection you can lose.
- Stop worrying about relevance objections. They are preserved under CCP 2025.460(c) whether you make them or not.
- Object on the record to the finances question, name relevance and privacy, and let the client answer the first one.
- Count the pattern. A line of questions into household spending is what a declaration describes, and one question is not.
- If you suspend, use the statutory words from CCP 2025.470, and get them into the transcript.
- Calendar 60 days from completion of the record for the other side's motion to compel under CCP 2025.480(b), so the deadline is not a surprise.
- For immigration, sexual conduct and tax returns, know which one you are in before the deposition, because those three change the answer.
The local layer
All of the above is statutory and statewide. What varies is the part that decides whether any of it is worth invoking: whether a department will hear a discovery dispute promptly, whether it will send you to an informal conference first, and whether it has any appetite for policing tone in a deposition it did not attend.
San Diego, Riverside and San Bernardino are the counties this site speaks to. Everywhere else, the statutes above are the answer and the department's standing order is the next thing to read. A confident sentence about how a particular bench handles a suspended deposition would be worth less than nothing.