You generally cannot refuse a deposition once you have been properly noticed as a party or served with a valid subpoena as a non-party witness. Ignoring the obligation exposes you to contempt, sanctions, or a judgment against you. What you can do is challenge a defective subpoena, invoke recognized privileges, or ask the court to limit how, when, and where the deposition happens. The useful question is not whether to refuse, but how to reshape what you’re being asked to do.
Party or Non-Party Changes Everything
Your first task is to figure out which side of the line you’re on, because the mechanics differ.
If you are a party to the lawsuit, the opposing side only needs to serve a notice of deposition. No subpoena is required. Your duty to appear comes from being in the case. Skip your own deposition and the court can impose sanctions under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37(d): treating disputed facts as established against you, barring you from offering certain evidence, striking your pleadings, or entering default judgment. The court will also typically order you or your attorney to pay the opposing side’s expenses and attorney’s fees.1Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 37 – Failure to Make Disclosures or to Cooperate in Discovery; Sanctions
If you are a non-party witness, the requesting party must serve you with a subpoena. Without one, you have no obligation to appear at all. Once served, refusal exposes you to contempt of court rather than case-ending sanctions, because there is no case of yours to sanction.
When a Subpoena Is Not Actually Enforceable
A subpoena is not self-executing just because it landed in your hands. Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 45, every subpoena must identify the issuing court, state the time and place of the deposition, and specify the method of recording. The issuing attorney has a duty to take reasonable steps to avoid imposing undue burden or expense, and courts will sanction lawyers who ignore that duty.2Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 45 – Subpoena
Rule 45(d)(3) says the court must quash or modify a subpoena that fails to allow reasonable time to comply, demands privileged material, exceeds geographic limits, or subjects you to undue burden.2Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 45 – Subpoena
Geographic Limits
A federal subpoena can only compel you to attend a deposition within 100 miles of where you live, work, or regularly transact business in person. Parties and their officers can be required to attend anywhere within the state where they reside or work. A subpoena that pushes past those limits can be quashed on that basis alone.2Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 45 – Subpoena
Reasonable Notice
Rule 45 requires “reasonable time to comply” without fixing a specific number of days. Reasonableness turns on how complex the subject matter is, whether you have documents to gather, and how far you would need to travel. A subpoena served Friday for a Monday deposition would almost certainly fail. State courts often set their own minimum notice periods.2Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 45 – Subpoena
Grounds That Actually Let You Push Back
Inconvenience is not a ground. Several other things are.
Privilege
Attorney-client privilege protects confidential communications between you and your lawyer made to get legal advice. Spousal privilege can protect communications between married partners. The work product doctrine shields documents and materials prepared in anticipation of litigation, including an attorney’s mental impressions, conclusions, and legal theories, and it extends to materials prepared by non-attorneys as long as they were created for litigation.3Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 26 – Duty to Disclose; General Provisions Governing Discovery
Under Rule 30(c)(2), your attorney can instruct you not to answer a question only to preserve a privilege, to enforce a court-ordered limitation, or to present a motion to terminate the deposition. That is the whole list. Outside those three situations, you generally must answer even if your attorney objects to the question’s form or relevance.4Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 30 – Depositions by Oral Examination
The Fifth Amendment
If answering could expose you to criminal liability, you can invoke the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in a civil case. Two catches. You must assert it question by question; a blanket refusal to appear does not work. And in civil proceedings, unlike criminal trials, the court or jury can draw an adverse inference from your silence, so the refusal to answer can be used against you in the civil case. It is a calculated trade-off that deserves careful conversation with a lawyer.
Relevance and Proportionality
Federal discovery is limited to nonprivileged information relevant to a party’s claims or defenses and proportional to the needs of the case. Courts weigh the importance of the issues, the amount at stake, the parties’ relative access to information, and whether the burden of the requested discovery outweighs its likely benefit.3Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 26 – Duty to Disclose; General Provisions Governing Discovery
Testimony with no connection to the case, or wildly out of proportion to what is at stake, is a valid basis to object. Federal courts dropped the older “reasonably calculated to lead to admissible evidence” language in 2015; the test now is relevance and proportionality, and discoverable information does not need to be admissible at trial.
Undue Burden
A deposition that imposes significant financial, logistical, or time burdens can be challenged. Facts matter more than law here. A non-party witness asked to fly across the country for three days of questioning in a minor contract case has a strong argument. Someone asked to spend two hours at an office ten miles away does not. Courts balance the value of the testimony against the practical cost to the deponent.
How to Challenge Without Simply Refusing
The formal tool for a non-party is a motion to quash or modify, filed in the district where you would have to comply. The burden is on you to explain why the subpoena is deficient or why compliance would be unreasonable.2Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 45 – Subpoena
Parties and non-parties alike can seek a protective order under Rule 26(c). A protective order can forbid particular lines of questioning, limit who attends, require testimony to be sealed, or shield trade secrets and confidential business information. You must show good cause, such as annoyance, embarrassment, oppression, or undue burden, and you must certify that you tried in good faith to resolve the dispute before running to the court.3Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 26 – Duty to Disclose; General Provisions Governing Discovery
One trap: filing a motion for a protective order does not automatically pause the deposition. Unless the court grants a stay, you are still expected to comply with the original schedule while the motion is pending.
Before any of that, try negotiation. Many disputes resolve when the requesting attorney agrees to a shorter time frame, a more convenient location, a narrower list of topics, or a remote format. The strongest protective order requests tie specific, concrete hardships to specific requested relief; vague inconvenience rarely persuades a judge.
Remote Depositions
If travel is your real objection, a remote deposition often resolves the problem without a fight. Under Rule 30(b)(4), the parties can agree, or the court can order, that a deposition be taken by telephone or other remote means such as video conference. For purposes of the rules, the deposition takes place where the deponent answers the questions, not where the examining attorney is located.4Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 30 – Depositions by Oral Examination
Remote depositions became routine during the pandemic and remain widely accepted. When the requesting party insists on in-person appearance despite significant distance or cost, asking the court to order a remote format is often easier than trying to quash the subpoena outright.
What Happens If You Simply Don’t Show
Consequences depend on your role and whether you have a pending objection on file.
If You Are a Party
A no-show party after proper notice will face a Rule 37(d) sanctions motion. The court can deem facts established against you, prohibit you from introducing evidence, strike your pleadings, or enter default judgment. The court must also order you or your attorney to pay the other side’s reasonable expenses and attorney’s fees unless the failure was substantially justified.1Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 37 – Failure to Make Disclosures or to Cooperate in Discovery; Sanctions
You cannot defend against these sanctions by arguing after the fact that the discovery was objectionable, unless you had a pending motion for a protective order at the time. If you believe a deposition is improper, get the motion on file before the deposition date. Skipping and arguing later almost never works.1Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 37 – Failure to Make Disclosures or to Cooperate in Discovery; Sanctions
If You Are a Non-Party
A non-party who ignores a valid subpoena faces contempt of court. The requesting party will typically first seek a motion to compel; refusal after a court order is what puts you in contempt territory. Civil contempt uses escalating penalties, like daily fines, designed to coerce compliance, and you end it by agreeing to testify. Criminal contempt is punitive: a fixed fine or jail time to punish the defiance itself, regardless of whether you later cooperate.
What Your Attorney Can and Cannot Do in the Room
Having a lawyer at your deposition is close to essential if any dispute is possible. Your attorney can negotiate timing, location, and scope in advance, and can object on the record during the deposition to preserve issues for later ruling. Form objections, meaning objections to how a question is phrased (leading, vague, compound), must be raised during the deposition or they are waived.5American Bar Association. Making the Record: Three Lessons for Making and Preserving Deposition Objections
Most objections do not stop the answer. Your attorney says “objection, form” or “objection, relevance,” and you still answer. The objection is preserved so the court can decide later whether to exclude the testimony. Your attorney can instruct you to stay silent only for privilege, a prior court order, or to seek an emergency motion to terminate a deposition being conducted in bad faith or in a manner that unreasonably annoys, embarrasses, or oppresses you.4Legal Information Institute. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 30 – Depositions by Oral Examination
Witness Fees for Non-Parties
If you are subpoenaed as a non-party, you are entitled to compensation, though modest. Under federal law, witnesses receive an attendance fee of $40 per day plus travel expenses. Driving is reimbursed at the government mileage rate, which for 2026 is 72.5 cents per mile. Common carrier costs are reimbursed at the most economical reasonable rate. Tolls, parking, and local transportation between your hotel and the terminal are also covered.6Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 USC 1821 – Per Diem and Mileage Generally
State courts set their own witness fees, some as low as $5 per day. Expert witnesses can negotiate market-rate compensation. If a fact witness is subpoenaed without the required fees tendered alongside the subpoena, that itself can be a basis to challenge compliance.