Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 33 governs interrogatories — the written questions one party in a federal lawsuit sends to another during discovery. Each side may serve up to 25 interrogatories on any other party, including all discrete subparts, and the party receiving them has 30 days to respond in writing and under oath. The rule gives litigants a structured way to lock down facts, force the other side to commit to legal positions, and narrow what actually needs to be tried.
When You Can Serve Them
You cannot send interrogatories the moment you file suit. Under Rule 26, the parties must first hold a discovery planning conference, and no discovery may be sought before that meeting. The conference has to happen at least 21 days before the court’s scheduling conference or the deadline for a scheduling order. The parties discuss claims, evidence preservation, and a proposed discovery plan, and only then can interrogatories go out. There is no early-delivery exception for Rule 33, unlike document requests under Rule 34.1Cornell Law School. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 26 – Duty to Disclose; General Provisions Governing Discovery Many lawyers draft their first set in advance and serve them the same day the conference ends.
The 25-Question Cap and How Subparts Count
Twenty-five is the ceiling per party, and it counts all discrete subparts.2Cornell Law School. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 33 – Interrogatories to Parties The parties can stipulate to more, or the court can grant leave for additional questions if they are proportional to the case. Courts enforce the cap seriously.
The fights come over what qualifies as a “discrete subpart.” You cannot dodge the limit by stuffing unrelated questions into one numbered interrogatory. If a subpart asks about something that could be answered independently of the main question, it counts as its own interrogatory. But a question that asks about a particular communication and also requests the date, location, and people present is generally treated as one, because those details belong to the same inquiry. The test courts apply is whether the subpart is logically part of the primary question or a separate topic dressed up as a follow-up.
What You Can Ask About
The scope tracks Rule 26(b): any nonprivileged matter relevant to a party’s claims or defenses, so long as the request is proportional to the needs of the case.2Cornell Law School. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 33 – Interrogatories to Parties Proportionality weighs the amount in controversy, each party’s access to the information, and whether the burden of answering would outweigh the likely benefit.1Cornell Law School. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 26 – Duty to Disclose; General Provisions Governing Discovery The information does not have to be admissible at trial; it just has to be reasonably calculated to lead to admissible evidence.
Contention Interrogatories
Rule 33 explicitly allows questions that ask how the opposing party applies the law to the facts, such as “state all facts supporting your claim that the defendant breached the contract.” A question is not objectionable simply because it seeks an opinion or a legal contention tied to facts. Courts can, however, defer the deadline for answering these until after depositions or even until a pretrial conference, on the theory that locking in legal theories before other discovery has surfaced key facts is unfair.2Cornell Law School. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 33 – Interrogatories to Parties Serve them early and expect a request for deferral.
How to Answer
Once served, you have 30 days to deliver written answers and any objections.2Cornell Law School. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 33 – Interrogatories to Parties Each interrogatory gets a separate, full answer. The duty is not limited to what you happen to remember. It requires a reasonably diligent search of records, electronic data, and other available sources.
The person providing the answers signs them under oath. A false answer carries the same legal exposure as lying on the witness stand.2Cornell Law School. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 33 – Interrogatories to Parties The attorney signs any objections separately, which ties the factual statements directly to the client rather than to counsel.
When the Party Is an Organization
If the responding party is a corporation, partnership, association, or government agency, an officer or agent answers and must furnish information available to the organization as a whole.2Cornell Law School. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 33 – Interrogatories to Parties That is broader than it sounds. The person answering cannot stop at their own knowledge; they have to gather information from every department and employee who might have relevant facts.
The Business Records Option
When the answer can be found in a party’s business records and the effort of locating it would be roughly equal for either side, the responding party may specify the records and give the requester reasonable access to examine them instead of writing out the answer.2Cornell Law School. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 33 – Interrogatories to Parties The specification has to be detailed enough for the other side to find the information as easily as the responding party could. Pointing vaguely at a stack of boxes does not satisfy the rule.
How to Object
Not every interrogatory deserves an answer, but the grounds for objecting have to be stated with specificity. Waving at a legal concept without explaining how it applies to the particular question is not enough.2Cornell Law School. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 33 – Interrogatories to Parties Common legitimate grounds include:
- Attorney-client privilege, for questions seeking the substance of confidential communications with counsel.
- Work-product protection, for materials an attorney prepared in anticipation of litigation.
- Disproportionate burden, where the time and cost of answering far exceed the likely value, measured against the Rule 26(b) proportionality factors.
- Overbreadth or irrelevance, for questions that sweep in large amounts of information with little tie to the claims or defenses.
Waiver and Boilerplate
Objections have to be raised within the same 30-day window as the answers. Any ground not stated on time is waived unless the court finds good cause, which is uncommon.2Cornell Law School. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 33 – Interrogatories to Parties Boilerplate objections carry a separate risk. Federal judges have repeatedly held that reciting generic phrases like “overly broad, unduly burdensome, and not reasonably calculated to lead to the discovery of admissible evidence” without tying them to the specific question is effectively no objection at all. Some judges have sanctioned lawyers who kept doing it after being warned. If you object, explain what makes the particular question problematic.
Duty to Supplement
Answering is not a one-time event. Rule 26(e) requires a party to update or correct interrogatory answers in a timely way once it learns a response was materially incomplete or incorrect, unless the corrected information has already reached the other side through other discovery.1Cornell Law School. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 26 – Duty to Disclose; General Provisions Governing Discovery
The penalty for ignoring this is severe. If you fail to supplement and then try to use the undisclosed information at trial, the court can exclude it entirely.3Cornell Law School. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 37 – Failure to Make Disclosures or to Cooperate in Discovery; Sanctions Cases quietly turn on this. A party that learns new facts and lets the old answer stand can find its own evidence locked out of the courtroom.
What Happens When the Other Side Won’t Answer
When a party ignores interrogatories or gives plainly inadequate answers, enforcement moves in stages, and each stage raises the stakes.
Motion to Compel
The first formal step is a motion to compel under Rule 37(a). Before filing, the moving party has to certify a good-faith effort to resolve the dispute informally, so a meet-and-confer letter or call needs to happen first.3Cornell Law School. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 37 – Failure to Make Disclosures or to Cooperate in Discovery; Sanctions If the court grants the motion, the losing side pays the moving party’s reasonable expenses, including attorney’s fees, unless its position was substantially justified. If the motion is denied, the moving party pays the other side’s costs of opposing it.
Sanctions for Disobeying a Court Order
If a party still refuses to answer after being ordered to, Rule 37(b)(2) opens up a much broader set of consequences. The court can impose any combination of the following:3Cornell Law School. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 37 – Failure to Make Disclosures or to Cooperate in Discovery; Sanctions
- Treating the matters covered by the interrogatory as established in favor of the requesting party.
- Barring the disobedient party from supporting or opposing certain claims, or from introducing specified evidence.
- Striking part or all of the disobedient party’s pleadings.
- Dismissing the case, or entering default judgment against the disobedient party.
- Holding the failure in contempt of court.
On top of any of those, the court must also order the disobedient party, their attorney, or both to pay the reasonable expenses and attorney’s fees caused by the failure, unless the noncompliance was substantially justified.3Cornell Law School. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 37 – Failure to Make Disclosures or to Cooperate in Discovery; Sanctions
Total Failure to Respond
A party that never serves any answers or objections at all faces a separate track under Rule 37(d). The moving party still has to certify a good-faith attempt to resolve the issue, but the court can go straight to the full menu of sanctions without a prior order to compel.3Cornell Law School. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 37 – Failure to Make Disclosures or to Cooperate in Discovery; Sanctions Claiming the interrogatories were objectionable does not excuse the silence unless a motion for a protective order was already pending. You cannot simply ignore questions and then argue after the fact that they were improper.
Service and Filing
Interrogatories and responses move between the parties under Rule 5. Delivery can happen by mail, hand delivery, or electronic means when the parties consent or the court uses an e-filing system.4Cornell Law School. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 5 – Serving and Filing Pleadings and Other Papers
One point trips up people new to federal court: interrogatories and answers are not filed with the court when exchanged. Rule 5(d) keeps them between the parties until they are actually used in a proceeding or the judge orders them filed.4Cornell Law School. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 5 – Serving and Filing Pleadings and Other Papers Raw factual exchanges stay off the public docket unless a motion or trial pulls them in.
Using Answers at Trial
An interrogatory answer can be used at trial to the extent the Federal Rules of Evidence allow.2Cornell Law School. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 33 – Interrogatories to Parties In practice, that usually means impeaching a witness whose trial testimony contradicts what they said under oath in discovery, or establishing an admission by a party opponent. Because the answers were sworn, they carry real weight with a jury. Once a party commits to a position in writing under oath, walking it back on the stand is difficult and costly to credibility.