After more than a million cases without a transcript, California high court allows recording

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Set us as preferred The California Supreme Court ruled Monday that electronic recording is allowed in civil cases when the court cannot provide a reporter to make a transcript and parties can’t afford to hire one, finding that a record of such hearings was “presupposed under California law.” Until now, recording court proceedings was prohibited in most such cases, requiring a licensed reporter to be present in order take down each word that was spoken for the official record.A shortage of professional stenographers in local court systems — combined with the high cost of hiring one privately — has meant that many civil hearings go without a verbatim record of what was said, making it difficult for parties to appeal.

Reform advocates have said the problem is especially acute in proceedings that involve allegations of domestic violence and other types of family court disputes.A recent report from the California Access to Justice Commission estimated more than a million hearings went unrecorded in a single year.

California California’s Supreme Court will decide whether to allow electronic recordings of most civil court proceedings.A ruling in favor could fix a crisis but have unintended consequences.“The continued failure of the superior courts to provide indigent litigants with a means of obtaining an official verbatim record deprives them of ‘meaningful access to the judicial process’,” Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero wrote for the court.

Criminal court proceedings and some types of civil hearings still will require a court reporter to make a transcript.Although the suit originally was brought by the Family Violence Appellate Project on behalf of domestic violence survivors and other vulnerable civil litigants, the case quickly became a proxy fight between the state’s largest public sector union and its...