§ 2035.060.Use of deposition to perpetuate testimony in subsequent actions; requirements

All the machinery in this chapter, the petition, the notice, the court's order, exists to produce one thing worth keeping: testimony that can later be used in a real lawsuit. This section closes the loop by saying how. A deposition taken to perpetuate testimony qualifies for later use whether it was taken under this chapter's own procedure, under a comparable pre-filing procedure from another state, from the federal courts, or from a foreign nation, so a petitioner is not penalized for having used a different jurisdiction's version of the same tool.

That later use is not unlimited, though. The deposition can be introduced only in a California action that involves the same subject matter the petition described, and only against a party, or the successor in interest of a party, who was named in the petition as an expected adverse party. The rules governing how any deposition may be used at trial, set out in Section 2025.620, still apply. This section does not create a separate standard for admitting a perpetuation deposition; it confirms that the deposition survives the gap between the petition and the eventual lawsuit and can be offered under the ordinary deposition-use rules once that lawsuit exists.