Court Opinion

ID: 9722947
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 09:57:22.753012+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:43.077699
License: Public Domain

GUSTAFSON, J.
I concur in the judgment because I believe that at the first opportunity the Supreme Court will re-examine and overrule Turner v. East Side Canal & Irr. Co. (1918) 177 Cal. 570 [171 P. 299]. The rule of that case is that when the record on appeal includes a reporter’s transcript which was paid for by the successful appellant for use during the trial, costs on appeal may not include anything for that transcript. This conclusion was felt compelled by the language of what is now section 1034 of the Code of Civil Procedure despite an acknowledgment by the court that the result is not fair and reasonable.
Suppose that in the case at bench the original and one copy of the entire reporter’s transcript on appeal had unquestionably been the precise documents which defendants had obtained and paid for during the trial. The Turner rule would prevent defendants from recovering any part of the expense of the documents as costs on appeal. Since this is a condemnation action, a new transcript ordered by defendants for the appeal would have been chargeable to plaintiff whether the appeal was successful or unsuccessful Surely there is no merit to an interpretation of a statute which encourages the waste of public funds. Nor is there any merit to an interpretation which deprives a successful appellant in other civil actions of that portion of his cost of a daily transcript used on appeal to which he unquestionably would have been entitled had he not ordered that transcript for use at trial.
There is, of course, the remote possibility that a condemnee who has incurred a substantial expense for a daily transcript and is awarded a satisfactory judgment will appeal on some inconsequential point in order to recoup most of those expenses by way of costs on appeal. I think that such a situation would be obvious to an appellate court and that the power to impose costs on such a condemnee for a frivolous appeal would prevent this gambit from being successful.
I think that the trial court was correct in saying that defendants were entitled to whatever the cost would have been for a transcript on appeal had there been no daily transcript. Since the cost of a daily transcript (original *688and one copy) would have been $7,816.12 (Gov. Code, § 69551) and defendants paid $8,240, it is obvious that plaintiff is correct in asserting that the reporter’s transcript on appeal consisted principally of the daily transcript. I nevertheless vote to affirm the order because I think that the Supreme Court today will not accept Turner.