A Bad Court Reporter can Ruin Your Day . . . and Your Appeal

 

Years ago, I was told that the definition of comedy is “bad things happening to other people.”  In the movies, we laugh when someone takes a big tumble, but we know if we were to fall we wouldn’t want anyone laughing at us.  Not to mention the pain of falling.  Maybe that is why you see comedians taking falls, but never shedding a drop of blood. 

 Appellate law is not the most exciting area of the law.  I like to think of it as more of an intellectual exercise where you are searching for judicial error or misconduct.  It usually isn’t the stuff of exciting movies, unless Al Pacino or Gregory Peck are arguing their cases. 

 In Manhattan, the courts were faced with an odd situation.  One of their court reporters apparently had some type of breakdown, suffering from the extreme pressure of reporting cases, in this instance a high-profile criminal trial.  The New York Post reported the alcoholic court reporter wrote out his own script for the trial instead of typing the words spoken by the parties and the judge.  The reporter sat through the hearing, probably looking as normal as apple pie, and pretended to take down those words, but he was actually writing, “I hate my job, I hate my job,” over and over again.  Apparently the reporter had committed similar misconduct in some 30 Manhattan court cases.  Who would have guessed?

  The reporter’s failure to report the proceedings will have a significant impact on any appeals for which a transcript cannot be supplied.  If this problem was discovered months after the reporter took down the testimony, it may be very difficult, if not impossible, to reconstruct what was said on the stand.   The judges have been holding “reconstruction hearings” at which all those involved testify about what they remember.  Tough, because memories fade so easily, especially if you have a heavy caseload. 

  The reporter, who has since been fired and is completing rehab, denied screwing up in court.  I guess the proof is in the transcripts.  Maybe someone will testify at the reconstruction hearing that the witness actually said, “I hate my job” over and over again on the stand, without a single objection or comment from the judge.  If the reporter’s notes are only gibberish, it is going to be very tough to argue that all the witnesses in 30 cases spoke that way.

  Claudia Trupp of the Center for Appellate Litigation in New York was quoted in the paper as saying, “This situation is terrible for everybody.  It’s very difficult to come up with a sufficient record based on everybody’s recollection years after the event.”   Glad it didn’t happen on one of my appeals.