Short answer. Yes, it can go back and forth up to four rounds. The other party has ten calendar days to serve cross-interrogatories, you then have five days to serve re-direct interrogatories, and they get three more days to serve recross-interrogatories — each round measured from service of the prior one.
What the law says
Within ten calendar days thereafter, a party so served may serve cross-interrogatories upon the party proposing to take the deposition. Within five calendar days thereafter, the latter may serve re-direct interrogatories upon a party who has served cross-interrogatories. Within three calendar days after being served with re-direct interrogatories, a party may serve recross-interrogatories upon the party proposing to take the deposition.
Rule 23, Section 25 — Deposition upon written interrogatories; service of notice and of interrogatories. Read the full provision →
How the process starts
The party wishing to take the deposition serves the written interrogatories on every other party, along with a notice naming who is to answer them and identifying the officer before whom the deposition is to be taken. That initial service is what sets the entire four-round sequence of interrogatories and cross-interrogatories in motion, so getting it right — naming the correct deponent and officer — matters before any of the subsequent deadlines can even begin running.
The four-round sequence
From there, the responding party has ten calendar days to serve cross-interrogatories; the original party then has five calendar days to serve re-direct interrogatories; and the responding party has a further three calendar days to serve recross-interrogatories. Each deadline runs from service of the round immediately before it, not from the original interrogatories, so a party who delays serving their own round effectively pushes back every deadline that follows in the sequence.
Why it looks different from an oral deposition
Rather than a live back-and-forth examination, this written process substitutes a scripted sequence of question sets, giving each side defined windows to add follow-up questions instead of the real-time exchange that happens in an oral deposition. The tradeoff is speed for structure: written interrogatories can take weeks to complete given the successive deadlines, but each side gets time to carefully draft its questions rather than reacting on the spot.
What happens if a party misses a deadline
The Rule ties each successive round to service of the one immediately before it, so a party who simply lets their window pass without serving cross-interrogatories, re-direct interrogatories, or recross-interrogatories effectively forfeits that particular round rather than freezing the whole process in place. The deposition can still move forward to be answered and used, just without the additional questions that party would otherwise have been entitled to add at their stage of the sequence.
Related provisions
- Rule 23, Section 25 — Deposition upon written interrogatories; service of notice and of interrogatories
- Rule 23, Section 26 — Officers to take responses and prepare record