Jameson v. Desta, case no. D066793 (4th Dist. Oct. 20, 2015) is a grim reminder of the impact made by the court’s budget crisis, which resulted in the loss of many court-employed court reporters, requiring that parties provide their own court reporters for trial at their expense. The trial in this case went unreported, and that was enough to keep the plaintiff from prevailing on appeal. But before I get to how that came about, let me briefly describe the history of the case, for it makes the result all that much more heartbreaking for the plaintiff. Plaintiff sued a prison doctor for malpractice. The doctor obtained a judgment on procedural grounds, plaintiff appealed,…
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Are records on appeal from the Los Angeles Superior Court about to get better?
The headline is not a dig at anyone at the Los Angeles Superior Court (LASC). It refers to the impact of the statewide court budget crunch, which led many courts to stop providing court reporters as a matter of course. Faced with having to engage court reporters on their own, some litigants were foregoing the expense, at risk of having records inadequate to prosecute their appeals. As a result, parties are appealing decisions without the reporter’s transcript that they would have been able to order under the old system. That can spell trouble for an appeal. Last Friday, the LASC announced that it is hiring court reporters. Actually, I can’t tell…
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What is the appellate “doghouse,” and why should you care?
No, I’m not talking about that imaginary place that your client puts you in if you lose the case. I’m talking about the mysterious “doghouse” references one sees when looking at the online docket of a California Supreme Court case. Take this snippet from the docket of a recently decided case, which shows that the record reached the Supreme Court on March 18, 2010: Now, it seems rather obvious from the above image that a doghouse is some measure of the volume of the record. And, if you have petitioned the Supreme Court for review, you can guesstimate the size of a doghouse based on how many doghouses the record…
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Make the record easy on the eyes, please
I was updating my blogroll and checking up on some of those links in preparation for a re-vamp of this site and a new blog project (more about that tomorrow), and I ran across a year-old post at Criminal Appeal I couldn’t agree with more, which starts: Dear Court Reporters, Having finished reading another all-capitalized reporter’s transcript it’s time to again implore you to remember that the proper use of capitalization is not simply a matter of style, but it is more a convention designed to assist the reader and prevent headaches. Capitalization helps the reader find the beginning of the sentence. Lower case letters are easier to discriminate from…
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Don’t Forget, Appellants: The Record is Your Burden, Too
Everyone knows, or should know, that part of the appellant’s burden of demonstrating prejudicial error is to present a record that adequately demonstrates the error. If you’re arguing the court erred in granting summary judgment, you’d think it would be pretty obvious to include all the moving papers, including the moving party’s statement of undisputed material facts (Code Civ. Proc. § 437c, subd. (b)(1)). The appellant in Gunn v Mariners Church, Inc., case no. G038445 (4th Dist. Sept. 2, 2008, ordered published Sept. 30, 2008), failed to include the moving party’ separate statement, with potentially dire consequences, but catches a break from an accommodating court: Critical to our review of…
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New Evidence on Appeal?
Odd as it sounds, it is possible in exceptionally rare circumstances. And I do mean exceptionally rare, which is why you almost never see it addressed in the cases. In yesterday’s In re Valerie W., case no. D051056 (4th Dist., Apr. 4, 2008, ordered published Apr. 21, 2008), in which appellants sought reversal of judgments terminating their parental rights, the minors’ counsel asked the court of appeal to take post-judgment evidence, in the form of her declaration, pursuant to Code of Civil Procedure section 909. Section 909 is a little dense in form (it would benefit from being set forth in subdivisions), but worth reading in full (emphasis added): In…
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The Record is Everything
Tom Caso has this post at The Opening Brief regarding a Ninth Circuit case last week in which Judge Kleinfeld laments his inability to follow his intuition and hold in favor of the government in an environmental case because of the government’s inability to actually support its case from the record. Its hard to tell from Judge Kleinfeld’s comments whether the government was hamstrung by its failure to preserve an adequate record or it merely failed to direct the court to those portions of the record that supported its position. Either way, it’s an embarrassment to have this type of deficiency pointed out by the court, and Tom uses the…
- Appellate Procedure, California Court of Appeal, California Procedure, Judges, Legal Writing, Record on Appeal
Settled Statements, New Trials, and the Languishing Criminal Defendant
When a reporter’s transcript of proceedings is unavailable for appeal, the appeal may proceed by way of a “settled statement.” California Rules of Court, rule 8.130(h). Some pitfalls of this procedure are revealed in People v. Cervantes, no. B183412 (May 16, 2007). On Cervantes’s first appeal, the court reporter advised that a technical malfunction prevented her from transcribing the testimony of the sole prosecution witness. Nearly a year after his conviction, Cervantes moved for summary reversal and a retrial based on the absence of the transcript. The Court of Appeal denied the motion but remanded for the trial court to determine if a settled statement could be obtained. At the…