Rule 30.Depositions Upon Oral Examination.

Subdivision (a) starts with freedom and carves out exceptions. Any party may depose any person, including a party, without leave of court, and Rule 45 supplies the subpoena power to compel attendance. Leave is required when the deponent is confined in prison, and, absent a written stipulation of the parties, when the person has already been deposed in the case or when a plaintiff wants a deposition before thirty days have run from service of process on any defendant. That thirty-day wait falls away if a defendant has already served a deposition notice or sought discovery, or if the plaintiff's notice certifies, with supporting facts, that the witness is expected to leave Rhode Island and be unavailable.

Subdivision (b) is the notice machinery. Reasonable written notice goes to every other party, stating the time, place and the name and address of each deponent, or a description good enough to identify an unknown person or class. The notice names the recording method — sound, sound-and-visual or stenographic — and the party taking the deposition bears the cost; another party who wants a second method must give prior notice to the deponent and the other parties and pay for it, unless the court orders otherwise. The officer opens the record with name and business address, the date, time and place, the deponent's name, the oath and an identification of everyone present, and repeats the first three items at the start of each new recording medium. If documents are wanted from a party deponent, a subpoena duces tecum or a Rule 34 request goes with the notice. Under Rule 30(b)(6) a party may name an organization and describe the subjects with reasonable particularity; the organization must then serve and file, before the deposition, a written designation naming who will testify on which matters. Remote depositions run by written stipulation or court order, and are treated as taken in the county and at the place where the deponent answers.

Subdivision (c) sets the room. Examination proceeds as permitted at trial under the Rhode Island Rules of Evidence except Rules 103 and 615, and, unless the court orders otherwise or the parties agree, no person whose presence an attorney of record or self-represented litigant has requested may be excluded. But anyone beyond the deposition officer, the witness, the attorneys and the parties may attend only if notice of that person went to all attorneys of record and self-represented litigants at least forty-eight hours ahead. Objections are noted on the record and the examination keeps going, subject to them. Subdivision (d) tightens conduct: objections stated concisely, without argument and without suggesting an answer, and an instruction not to answer only to preserve a privilege, enforce a limitation the court has directed, or present a motion to terminate or limit. The court may cap the time for a deposition, must allow more when a fair examination needs it, and may sanction anyone who frustrates the examination.

Two endgame provisions decide arguments later. Under subdivision (e), if the deponent or a party asks before the deposition is complete, the deponent gets thirty days after being notified that the transcript or recording is available to review it and sign a statement reciting any changes and the reasons for them. Under subdivision (f)(1), the officer, or in a non-stenographic deposition the examining attorney or self-represented litigant, certifies that the witness was duly sworn and that the transcript is a true record; unless the court orders otherwise the original is not filed, and the self-represented litigant, the examining attorney or the attorney who ordered the stenographic transcription seals it in an indorsed envelope and keeps it, available to the court or another party on request. Subdivision (g) shifts costs onto a party who notices a deposition and then fails to attend, or fails to serve a subpoena so the witness does not attend, while others travel to be there.