Court Opinion

ID: 9726873
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 13:11:03.481078+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:31.657799
License: Public Domain

PARAS, Acting P. J., Concurring.
I cannot let the comments of our dissenting justice pass without expressing independent thoughts thereon.
The practice of discarding raw notes (including interview notes) used to record concurrently transpiring events is universal. A given newsman will make them at the scene of a news event as he interviews interested parties, makes observations, etc., will later dictate or write the event more formally, and will then discard the the notes as useless. A particular contractor will take notes during the inspection of a job site, later will use them to work up a formal bid, then will discard them. A teach*645er will generate rough notes in the course of research to prepare a lecture, then destroy them when no longer needed. Lawyers, judges, investigators, doctors, secretaries, clergymen, educators, architects, interior decorators, salespersons, interviewers, and a host of other persons who produce written matter of any sort, often routinely commence their process by on-the-spot rough notes, sketches, and diagrams whose sole purpose is to facilitate later complete and meaningful products, and which are thereafter destroyed. Many such writings are incomprehensible and confusing except to those who make them, encompassing as they do one’s personal version of abbreviations, symbols, signs, doodles, and meaningful (to the maker) hieroglyphics. Even the maker often no longer understands them after the passage of substantial time. Many are downright embarrassing to those who are self conscious regarding their personal manner of depicting or describing certain subjects, or abbreviating words; such persons consider notes of this kind highly personal, under no circumstances to be seen by others.
There are of course certain of us, metaphorical “pack rats,” who never destroy or discard anything and consequently retain even the roughest of such notes. There are others who discard them purely out of a sense of neatness, reluctant to retain anything which has served its purpose. And there are those who discard them consciously because they do not want them observed by anyone else. What these varying types generally have in common, those who save and those who discard is an absence of guile. In the process of discarding, those who do so intend no deception. There is nothing sinister about their practice. They simply and reasonably feel that their ultimate product has been produced by fair and accurate means, and those means need no longer be preserved. My personal conclusion, based on the encounter of hundreds of such raw notes during 30 years experience at the bench and bar, is that they should routinely be destroyed, for they rarely aid in ascertaining truth, and more often than not generate confusion and consequent falsehood.
I am sure that the dissenter would never condemn this practice as it relates to judicial notes we take during oral argument, later to destroy after writing an opinion. I am equally certain he does not condemn the practice when done by the multitudes of others in other occupations. In my view, he should treat police officers the same. A distinction is not warranted.
*646Nor am I impressed by the argument that the federal rule accords with the dissenting view. The federal judiciary is entitled to its folly just as our state is entitled to its own (see e.g., People v. Disbrow (1976) 16 Cal.3d 101 [127 Cal.Rptr. 360, 545 P.2d 272].) Merely because federal authority refuses to treat police like other human beings does not mean that state authorities should do the same. The federal rule is no more sensible or reasonable because it is a federal rule than it would be as a state rule.
A petition for a rehearing was denied February 24, 1981. Reynoso, J., was of the opinion that the petition should be granted. Appellant’s petition for a hearing by the Supreme Court was denied April 1, 1981. Bird, C. J., was of the opinion that the petition should be granted.