Short answer. Not ordinarily. Rule 132, Section 13 bars a party from impeaching a witness it presented, unless the court has declared that witness unwilling or hostile based on a shown adverse interest, unjustified reluctance to testify, or having misled the party into calling him — at which point he may be impeached as if called by the other side.
What the law says
the party presenting the witness is not allowed to impeach his or her credibility.
Rule 132, Section 13 — Party may not impeach his or her own witness. Read the full provision →
What the law says
A witness may be considered as unwilling or hostile only if so declared by the court upon adequate showing of his or her adverse interest, unjustified reluctance to testify, or his or her having misled the party into calling him or her to the witness stand.
Rule 132, Section 13 — Party may not impeach his or her own witness. Read the full provision →
The general rule and why it exists
The starting position is that a party vouches for the witness it chooses to present, so attacking that same witness's credibility is treated as inconsistent — a party cannot ask the court to believe a witness enough to call him, and then turn around and discredit him the moment his testimony stops being helpful. Allowing that kind of whipsaw would make presenting witnesses strategically manipulative rather than a genuine effort to put relevant testimony before the court, so the rule keeps the presenting party bound to the witness it selected, for better or worse, absent the specific circumstances the section describes.
How a witness becomes fair game
The exception is not automatic just because a witness turns out unhelpful. The court itself must make a formal declaration that the witness is unwilling or hostile, and that declaration requires an adequate showing of one of three things: that the witness has an adverse interest in the outcome, that the witness is showing unjustified reluctance to testify at all, or that the witness misled the party into calling him in the first place, for instance by giving a very different account before trial than what he now says on the stand.
What changes once that declaration is made
Once the court makes that finding, the presenting party may impeach the witness in essentially all the ways the opposing party could have — challenging his account, confronting him with prior inconsistent statements, and cross-examining him on the substance of his testimony — with one notable limit still in place: he still may not be impeached through evidence of his bad character. That carve-out means the hostility declaration opens up substantive impeachment tools without turning the proceeding into a free-for-all character attack on someone the party itself originally chose to bring forward as a witness.
Related provisions
- Rule 132, Section 13 — Party may not impeach his or her own witness
- Rule 132, Section 12 — Impeachment by evidence of conviction of crime
- Rule 132, Section 14 — How witness impeached by evidence of inconsistent statements