Yesterday we wrote about Supreme Court justices’ separate statements when review is denied of unpublished Court of Appeal opinions and said that the statements should appear in the Supreme Court’s official reports. Otherwise, we said, the statements would be available only on the Supreme Court’s online docket, appended to the opinion linked to on the Court of Appeal docket, “and also maybe in a computer research database.”
Well, it turns out the Supreme Court and the Reporter of Decisions are taking steps to insure that appearing in computer research databases is more than just a “maybe.”
The Reporter of Decisions, Lawrence Striley, explained to At The Lectern how his office signifies that a Court of Appeal opinion has been re-posted with a Supreme Court justice’s separate statement appended: “We post it with the original posting date but add an ‘s’ to the docket number. The scheme we use for posting both published and nonpublished opinions and to which the various publishers have become accustomed is that the additional letters after the docket number mean that something ‘special’ has happened. For example, if a previously posted opinion has been modified we add an ‘m’ to the docket number. For a second modification, we add an ‘n.’ Here, the ‘s’ following the docket number, especially when combined with the original posting date, indicates to all publishers that a Supreme Court statement has been appended.”
Thus, yesterday’s re-posting of the Court of Appeal opinion with Justice Liu’s separate statement shows up on the unpublished opinion web page like this: