The phrase 'had been given before' is correct and usable in written English.
It is used to indicate something that happened in the past but whose consequences are still visible in the present. Example sentence: Although the warning had been given before, they continued to ignore it.
But Messrs Gerth and Van Natta contend that she did not read a classified National Intelligence Estimate she had been given before that vote.Probably Mrs Clinton's most troubling quality is what Mr Bernstein tactfully calls her "difficult relationship with the truth".
Sibelius's First Symphony and his tone-poem Finlandia had been given before by the same Society, under Mr. Granville Bantock, at a concert in March of the present year, but an isolated performance of music so novel as that of Sibelius really gives one very little insight into it.
The Sochi Games organisers said that a warning signal had been given before the forerunner bobsleigh was sent down the track.
A translation of intuitionistic propositional logic into a modal logic (anticipating S4) had been given before Gödel, and before the earlier (failed) attempt Becker 1930 (cited by Gödel), by the Russian logician I.E. Orlov.
No radiation therapy had been given before tumor sampling.
If 25 mL/kg HES had been given before SV maximisation was achieved, fluid challenges were then performed with 250 mL boluses of Ringer's lactate solution.
Several sufficient conditions, more restrictive than ours, have been given before; see, for instance, [8, 9, 14, 15] where initial energy must satisfy a condition more restrictive than (E u_{0},v_{0}) < eta_{0} u_{0},v_{0})).
At the very least it afforded him the opportunity he should perhaps have been given before.
Details were discussed by administration officials who cited testimony that was to have been given before Congress today.
The judge said she accepted his conditions to "assure the defendant a fair trial" and to encourage his "candid and full testimony, which never has been given before".
However protest groups say they are not reassured by promises of "best practice" - which have been given before in other safety critical situations, and later found to be flawed.
