Opinion ID: 2613319
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: today's opinion, creating a dichotomous division of court-generated record-keeping products, will result in multiple entries of appealable orders and of judgments to be entered on the court's journal.

Text: The court proposes a simplistic and unrealistic dichotomous division of court-generated record-keeping products  i.e., (1) minutes and (2) memorials that strictly comply with § 696.3's criteria. It would have minutes include every memorial not strictly complying with the § 696.3 standards. Today's opinion ignores the reality that memorials complying with the § 24 standards must and will continue to be entered on the journal. [37] In order to protect the journal from multiple memorials of the same ruling. I would propose a trichotomous analysis of court-generated record-keeping products and identify its components as: 1. Minutes 2. Recordable memorials that comply with § 24's standards but do not substantially meet the § 696.3 criteria 3. Recordable memorials that substantially comply with both §§ 24 and 696.3. In implementing my trichotomous division, I would counsel that in the exercise of its Art. 7, § 6 powers [38] the court should direct the clerks to exclude the second category of memorials from § 24 journalization. Our failure to do so today will create double-entry record-keeping, causing chaos in the symmetry and stability of the system. Double or triple recordable memorials of the same ruling will be commonplace. The court's murky dichotomy creates the probability, if not indeed a possibility, of judgments and appealable orders having two or more not entirely identical memorials as external proof of their existence. This court stands committed to the principle that in the judgment roll of a case there can be only one authentic memorial of a judgment. [39] When confronting two instruments memorializing the same ruling, the court held that the later entry does not supersede the former, even if the latter contains matter not covered by the former. [40] The Aishman doctrine protects the inviolability of the earlier-recorded memorial. It prevents any supplementation, modification or vacation from being papered over the authentic earlier memorial without the safeguards prescribed by the procedures in 12 O.S. 1991 §§ 1031 et seq. [41] Absent orderly vacation process, the later memorial must continue to be a nullity. The law should not tolerate more than one record entry of the same ruling. Today's pronouncement appears to invite this anomaly and sanction its use. The possibility of double entries is exacerbated by the court's reasoning that any signed and recordable memorial having the word minute in its title may be disregarded as a minute rather than an order. The court reasons that § 696.2(C) [42] requires the memorial's substantive content to be ignored if the paper is labeled as a minute. [43] By ignoring the existence of memorials that, though recordable under § 24, do not meet the § 696.3 criteria, the court paves the way for multiple recordable memorials of the same ruling. If the first fails to meet all of the literal § 696.3 criteria or is entitled minute, the second memorial, even if a nullity under Aishman, would count as the appeal-time's trigger.