No. 12

April 24, 2010

Georgia Cases and Comments

Record Citations: Does the Court of Appeals Ask Too Much?

Adamson v. General Electric

Case No. A09A2302, 2010 Ga. App. LEXIS 268 (March 22, 2010)

Before addressing the merits of an appeal, the Court of Appeals made a comment about the appellant's citations to the record. The appellant had cited several items by referencing the beginning page of the item and that item's internal page number. For instance, page 123 in a lengthy deposition might be referenced by something like R7.3210 at p. 123. In the Adamson case, the opinion faults this:

[A]ppellant's citations to the record are not in proper form. Citations should be made to the volume and page number of the appellate record, not to the first page of a certain document and then to the internal page number of that document. See Rules of the Court of Appeals of Georgia, Rule 25 (c) (2) (iii). It is a disservice to the client to not follow the rules of this Court which are designed to facilitate review.

The case did not appear to turn in any way on this point.

 

With all due respect to the Court, I submit that it is the Court's rule on this subject that is a disservice to the client and to the public generally. All too many times, one cannot determine from the index to the record what the page number will be. Depositions sometimes begin with a copy of the envelope, sometimes not. Exhibits are sometimes preceded by the page with the exhibit tab, sometimes not. Copyists occasionally copy the same page twice, and sometime skip pages. And there are many other ways in which the record can vary from what one might expect.

The only way to absolutely avoid this problem is to visit the Clerk's Office of the Courts of Appeals in every appeal and pull the record. There are about 2,500 appeals per year, with an average of over two sides per appeal. Requiring each lawyer to visit the Court would be horribly inefficient, and blaming them for not being so inefficient is as bad.

Until a completely electronic record becomes the norm, the Court of Appeals should be tolerant of these efforts at greater efficiency. It will not hurt the fact checkers to do a little extra thumbing. All of the rest of the world does it.