Opinion ID: 2639453
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Sufficiency of the Record for this Appeal

Text: ¶ 13 This court is called upon to review today one district court's nullity sentence pronounced upon another district court's adjudication, rested upon the latter decision's facially-apparent partial invalidity. This task can be accomplished only by examining the entire judgment roll. [26] The Lincoln County record for the appeal we now review has been assembled and certified, [27] but the Craig County probate's judgment roll is in disarray. It consists only of certified copies of critical documents the parties deemed indispensable for the determination of the probate decree's facial validity and of other issues raised below. [28] A collateral attacksuch as that brought in Lincoln Countyis not designed to afford corrective relief by appeal. Its issues stand confined to a review of the assailed judgment's four corners for facial validity a process that ordinarily can be accomplished only by resort to a complete judgment roll. ¶ 14 No issue will be resolved upon a critically deficient record. [29] Our examination of the Craig County record is of necessity confined to instruments from that county's probate proceeding which stand included in the record for appeal and which qualify for incorporation into the judgment roll. [30] While generally this court will not notice any instrument that is not a part of the appellate record, [31] uncontroverted facts dehors that record which stand admitted in the parties' briefs may be considered to supplement the deficiently-assembled or incomplete judgment roll. [32] ¶ 15 Neither party voiced here an objection to the Lincoln County court's determination of the probate decree's facial invalidity upon an incomplete judgment roll nor asserted that any missing documents, if there presented for inspection, would reveal anything contrary to the Lincoln County court's view of the probate judgment roll's condition. Nor was an objection ever raised on that ground before this court. We hence conclude the Craig County probate's judgment roll (aided by the parties' admissions in the briefs) is complete enough to warrant our pronouncement that the probate decree in contest is indeed facially void pro tanto.