With a not-so-subtle plug for electronic recording of trial court proceedings, the Supreme Court in Jameson v. Desta today holds that superior courts must make court reporters available to indigent litigants who, by reason of having had their court fees waived, need not pay a fee to have a court reporter attend a proceeding. The court’s unanimous opinion by Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye invalidates as to those litigants a San Diego court policy that, for reasons caused by what the court calls “an extraordinarily difficult budgetary situation,” made the court’s reporters unavailable for most civil trials and required the hiring of private reporters by those wanting a transcript of proceedings.
The court concludes that the San Diego policy “creates the type of restriction of meaningful access to the civil judicial process that the relevant California in forma pauperis precedents and legislative policy render impermissible.” San Diego should have instead employed the judiciary’s long-standing “inherent discretion to facilitate an indigent civil litigant’s equal access to the judicial process even when the relevant statutory provisions that impose fees or other expenses do not themselves contain an exception for needy litigants.”
A long footnote at the beginning of the opinion recognizes that many states use electronic recording to make a record of oral trial court proceedings, and it touts a recent report by the Commission on the Future of California’s Court System that the court says “contains an informative discussion of recent technological advances in digital recording of court proceedings and of the considerable potential benefits, both economic and otherwise, of such technology for parties, courts, and the judicial system as a whole.” The footnote also acknowledges, however, a substantial statutory limitation on using electronic recording in California’s courts (see here) and says that “legislative authorization is required to proceed with [the Commission’s] recommendation” of a comprehensive digital recording pilot program.
If the point were not already clear enough, there are two more footnotes later on in the opinion that repeat the need for action by the Legislature to generally allow electronic recording of trial proceedings. Whether these pointed suggestions can overcome the considerable influence of the court reporters’ lobbyists in Sacramento is another story.
It might be just a coincidence, but, in addition to issuing its opinion pushing for electronic recording of trial proceedings, the court today also uploaded to YouTube the video recordings of its oral proceedings.
The court reverses the Fourth District, Division One, Court of Appeal.