Court Opinion

ID: 9728260
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 14:03:18.891307+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:47.217030
License: Public Domain

White, C. J.,
dissenting.
I concur in Judge Carter’s dissent and also add the following observations in support of the conclusions made therein. The statute since 1961 provides that this court promulgates the rules for the preparation, filing, and delivery of a bill of exceptions in all cases.
Our rules require: “* * * a praecipe requires that all of the evidence offered at the trial and all of the evidence offered at any hearing on any matter and the rulings thereon be included in the bill of exceptions.” (Emphasis supplied.) Rule 7c, Revised Rules of the Supreme Court, 1967.
And there could be no partial bill of exceptions because our rules require that a partial bill of exceptions *444must be prepared only if the written consent of all other parties be endorsed on or attached to such praecipe. Rule 7c, Revised Rules of the Supreme Court, 1967. No such consent or stipulation appears in this case. Our rule provides: “The bill of exceptions shall be certified by the court reporter as being correct and complete in accordance with the praecipe.” (Emphasis supplied.) Rule 7d1, Revised Rules of the Supreme Court, 1967. Our Rule 7d2, Revised Rules of the Supreme Court, 1967, provides as follows: “If the court reporter is unable to prepare and certify a bill of exceptions, a bill of exceptions shall be prepared under the direction and supervision of the trial judge and shall be certified by the judge and delivered to the clerk of the district court.” (Emphasis supplied.) The trial judge in his certificate stated as follows: “That at said trial, Counsel for Plaintiff offered what are herewith marked as Exhibits 1 through 8, inclusive, and that said Exhibits were received in evidence by the Court.” Elsewhere the certificate of the court reporter states that counsel for both parties waived the reporting of the cause and tried same to the court and “that said record was not prepared in the usual and customary manner, of preparing Bills of Exceptions, * *
The praecipe requires that all of the evidence be included in the bill of exceptions. It requires a certificate by the court reporter or the judge, “as being correct and complete in accordance with the praecipe.” Rule 7d1, Revised Rules of the Supreme Court, 1967.
It seems: clear to me that we have no bill of exceptions in this case. What we have, and by express recital by the trial judge, is nothing more than a certificate that eight exhibits were entered and received in evidence.
The rules involved here are not mere technical rules. I know of no procedural rule in our court’s history that has been more rigidly enforced than the one that protects the integrity of this court’s jurisdiction by requir*445ing, in the interests of justice, that there be guaranteed to this court a complete record of all the evidence for judicial review. In the absence of such a bill of exceptions or such a certificate guaranteeing the authenticity of the transcript containing all the evidence, the only question that this court can decide is whether the pleadings support the judgment entered by the lower court. The cases reveal that this is not a rule created for the purpose of disposing of an adversary procedural controversy by counsel, but rather rests basically on the necessity of the court’s preserving the integrity of its jurisdiction and not deciding cases only on an apparent incomplete record of the evidence or on conjectural speculation. And it has long since been determined that it is the responsibility of the appellant to procure a proper bill of exceptions if he wishes to have reviewed any issue presenting a question of the sufficiency of the evidence or the trial of a fact issue. See Crafts v. Sawtelle, 132 Neb. 592, 272 N. W. 567.
Turning to an examination of the exhibits, I can find very little, if any, basis for a determination that no reasonable controversy existed with reference to the second week of disability prior to the time the litigation and the suit in compensation court was initiated. There is a statement (exhibit 1) by the plaintiff’s doctor that he had billed the employer for an $18 charge and had not received payment. No inference can be, drawn from this exhibit as to the extent of disability. On February 22, 1968, the plaintiff, through her attorney, made claim against the defendant for the $18 doctor bill and for the second week of workmen’s compensation wages to his client. I am unable to come to the conclusion that a naked statement for a doctor bill by the attending physician without a recital of the extent of disability or a letter asserting a claim for this amount from a lawyer constitutes a showing that no reasonable controversy existed as to whether the disability actually existed and whether it was unjustly refused by the defendant. *446On the contrary, a statement by the plaintiff’s doctor, dated July 23, 1968, states that the date of the injury was August 20, 1967, and the patient was discharged as cured on August 28, 1967. This, of course, would permit only an inference of a week of disability, which is noncompensable under the compensation law. Significant is the fact that in this report the day on which the patient was able to return to work is left blank in the spaces provided for an answer. In the medical report by claimant’s doctor, W. E. Engdahl, M.D., on July 23, 1968, the questions 20, 21, and 22 requiring answers as to when the patient was able to resume regular work or when she would be able to resume, work were left blank. The first medical report by the plaintiff’s doctor sustaining her claim for 2 weeks of disability appears in the record in exhibit 2, a letter to the plaintiff’s attorney from the doctor reciting in effect that she was entitled to a week of compensable disability, or a total of 2 weeks altogether.
The first appearance of any evidence that could be considered to show liability of the defendant was his report to the Workmen’s Compensation Court dated June 7, 1968. In this report it is recited: “Probable length of disability - 2 weeks.” This is a report filed in the Workmen’s Compensation Court after the initiation of litigation to recover the claim. The plaintiff was injured on August 20, 1967. She was discharged as cured by the doctor on August 28, 1967. The medical reports sustaining the claim for the 2 weeks of disability were all filed and first appear in the picture after the initiation of litigation. The admission on June 7, 1968, responsive to the demands of litigation that the plaintiff suffered a probable disability of 2 weeks, is not, in my opinion, any evidence that the defendant knowingly or unjustly and unreasonably refused pay of the extra week of disability now sustained by the doctor’s subsequently filed medical reports. We do not know that we have all of the evidence. But if we do, there is no *447evidence that at the time or immediately subsequent to the suffering of the, second week of disability that the defendant knew of it or was notified of it by the plaintiff. Nor is there any evidence that in the intervening period of time, either by her doctor or by plaintiff, that she, made the claim against the defendant or demanded the payment of the compensation disability. The first appearance of even a claim for the second week of disability is in the letter from the lawyer to the defendant threatening litigation to collect it. In the light of her own doctor’s reports and in the light of the somewhat equivocal statement in this respect made as late as September 1968, and in the absence of any evidence from the plaintiff herself, it seems to me that the district court was correct in not finding that a reasonable controversy existed with reference to the plaintiff’s additional disability. Or to put it another way, it seems to me that there was insufficient evidence to sustain the plaintiff’s burden of proof to show that the defendant unjustifiably refused to pay for the claimed compensable disability. Surely it must be conceded that defendant cannot be penalized in the district court for the time delay involved in litigating the, issue of whether the plaintiff had met her burden of proof to show that the defendant unjustifiably refused to pay her claim for the additional week’s compensation.