Situation:
Alvin and Bill are neighbors who haven’t gotten along forever. Minor hassling over whose garbage wasn’t well enough secured, whose music is too loud, who cuts their grass too early on Saturday, whose kids trespass…you know the crap that happens when two stubborn guys get one of those feuds going, and neither is willing to ever apologize or simple turn the other cheek to break the tit for tat cycle. The ‘offenses’ get worse and more blatant as time goes on.
Finally some breaking point is reached, a punch is thrown, and when it ends we have two faily battered guys – one with a couple broken bones (rib & fingers), the other with a smashed nose and a lost tooth, both needing stitches. Nothing life threatening or maiming, I hasten to add.
One of their wives called the cops, but the fight was over by the time they arrived. They talked to both guys, each claimed the other started it, apparently the wife had been indoors when it started so could say what had happened. I don’t know the details, but it has come down to Alvin and Bill each accusing the other of battery and suing for pain and medical bills and whatever else their lawyers could think of. (This is guy vs. guy, not state vs. guy … I assume this means the police/whoever decided there was no way to know who was ‘in the wrong’ or maybe it was too minor a hassle to be bothered taking to trial.)
Now, unknown to anyone at the time, a third neighbor happened to have witnessed the start of the fight from inside her house. Let’s call her, oh, SBS will do. 
SBS happens to think BOTH Alvin and Bill have been acting like immature brats for months. Emotionally on the level of toddlers: you took my ball, I’ll kick sand in your eyes, waaa! you hit me with your shovel… SBS has no particular love or hate for either, but SBS plans to keep living in the neighborhood, and as best she knows, so do Alvin and Bill …and, clearly, neither Alvin or Bill are guys you want to have actively hating you. So SBS decided to keep her mouth shut and keep out of it.
However, she didn’t decide that soon enough. She had (stupidly) made a comment to another neighbor (unrelated to Alvin or Bill) during a gossip session the day after, and what she’d said made it clear she’d seen the fight. Or at least, some of it, she didn’t come out and say anything like “I saw X hit Y and then…” just “God, it was awful, I never saw two men fighting like that in real life before.”
“Somehow” the fact that SBS might be a witness eventually made it to the ears of one of the lawyers, and she’s been getting messages left on her answering machine.
That’s my situation. So far I haven’t returned the calls. My question is, do I have to answer questions asked by a lawyer in this situation? Can I just refuse to talk to him completely? I realize I could be subpoenaed, and would be required to testify in court, but exposure to a zillion years of movie/TV lawyering has left the impression that lawyers don’t like to question a witness in court unless they have already gone over everything with them and know what the witness will say.
Well, if I don’t talk to him before the trial, he won’t know, will he? In fact, he won’t know the most critical thing, that is, who I’m going to say threw the initial punch if I ever have to say. Maybe it’s his guy I’d finger.
In those circumstances, would the lawyer just give up on using me for a witness eventually?
Beside, like I said, both Alvin and Bill did everything they could to build this feud up until it became a fight, and I think morally they’re pretty much equally guilty and I really, really, wish they’d just drop both suits and GROW UP.
And leave me out of it.