Court Opinion

ID: 7816511
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-09-07 17:38:18.020667+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:30:37.024670
License: Public Domain

George Rose Smith, J., (dissenting). It seems to me that in Case No. 3242, the ex parte appeal, the majority are taking an altogether unrealistic position in holding that Wirges should have filed a conventional lawsuit against the court reporter, with a formal complaint, service summons, time for answer, and so forth. I find nothing in our prior decisions that lays down such a requirement. Wirges filed a motion asking that the court reporter be directed to make available a transcript of the proceedings of March 19, 1963. In substance that motion amounted to exactly the same thing as an application for mandamus. The stenographer is, as we said in Bell v. Rice, 183 Ark. 105, 35 S. W. 2d 88, at all times amenable to the orders of the circuit court itself, acting under the supervision and control of the circuit judge. It would have been a simple matter for the court, in passing upon Wirges’ motion, to have conducted an informal hearing and given to the reporter whatever instructions were thought to be appropriate. To me it is unthinkable that this litigant, in order to obtain a record to which in my opinion he was entitled as a matter of right, should be required to file an adversary proceeding merely to convince the circuit judge that he should direct his own stenographer to transcribe his notes. A comparable situation arises under our own Rule 5. This rule provides that if an appellant thinks that our clerk is in error in refusing to accept a tendered record he may file a motion for a rule to require the clerk to docket the appeal. It has never been suggested that we should have our clerk served with a summons so-that the dispute may be brought to an issue by written pleadings. In my judgment it is equally unreasonable to require this appellant to engage in formal litigation with a court stenographer as a condition to obtaining a transcript of the proceedings. Harris, C. J., joins in this disent.