Opinion ID: 2613319
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the substantive content of the october 7 memorial, rather than the name given it by its author, determines whether it qualifies as an order or as a minute.

Text: The meaning and effect of an instrument depends on its substantive content rather than on the form or title provided by its author. [5] Although the October 7, 1993 memorial bears the printed title minute, the paper clearly meets the attributes of a recordable order. [6] Its content directs that the City be given the requested relief  i.e., the action's dismissal  and the direction is signed by the judge. The instrument clearly is an order  albeit one that does not trigger appeal time when measured by the § 696.3 standards. [7] While both orders and minutes [8] are posted on the appearance docket, [9] each has a distinct legal identity [10] and is facially distinguishable from the other by its content and substance. [11] A minute of a judge's court-room ruling internalizes the event or proceeding by a short abstract to be posted solely on the court's appearance docket. It is not the event's official proof. For external use that proof is provided by the recordable [12] memorial that is on file in the case and must be entered on the journal. In the past, it was the latter memorial's filing that triggered appeal time. Minutes are never a fit substitute for a judge's recordable entry since minutes are incomplete by definition. [13] Record entry of orders or judgments may never be accomplished by the clerk's minutes or by unsigned (or initiated) entries later posted on the appearance docket. [14] While a judge, much like a courtroom deputy clerk, may write minutes for posting on the appearance docket, once the minutes are signed and meet the criteria prescribed in § 24, they are at once, by force of law, transmuted into recordable memorials. The court attempts to avoid characterizing the October 7 paper as an order by using syllogistic logic. It reasons that minutes are posted on the appearance docket; the judge-signed paper, here in contest, was posted on the appearance docket; ergo, it must be a minute or minute order. [15] This reasoning ignores the essential function of an appearance docket. It is to be kept as a chronological index of all papers filed and of all significant actions taken in a case; it must reflect courtroom minutes [with abstracts of all proceedings in the case ] and list the filed orders that are recordable. [16] The October 7 memorial's content and substance meet all of the 12 O.S. 1991 §§ 24 and 1116 [17] criteria of a recordable order. The handwritten and signed direction of the trial judge which dismissed the action is a recordable order that cannot be transmuted into a minute by a pre-printed label on the form upon which it is inscribed.