I am writing an article about the California Supreme Court proposing a
change to Rule 977, which limits to citations to published cases.
Apparently the court is upset that attorneys are citing to cases found
on electronic data bases that have not been ordered published by the
court, but there is no notice in the database about the status of the
decision. Another problem is that the rule is supposed to apply only to
state appellate and superior court appellate division cases, not to
unpublished federal opinions. The proposal by itself, and the
invitation to California lawyers and law librarians to comment,
normally wouldn't warrant a full article. But the court's notice ends
with an invitation to comment on "whether rule 977 should be further
amended to expressly prohibit the citation of any opinion of a federal
or state court available only (1) a computer-based source of
decisional law and/or (2) a specialized or topical reporter."
The court's opinions are officially published in print about 6-8 weeks
after they are issued, which means nobody could cite to those rulings
that the court orders published, and indeed are published in electronic
form the day they are issued, and in printed form with established
citations within a few days in the San Francisco and Los Angeles Daily
Journals and The Recorder, and on Westlaw and Lexis.
I'm looking for comment on this proposal, especially from California
Lawyers and law librarians. Please send E-mail or call me at
408/287-4866 today (Thursday, Nov. 2). The article is for tomorrow's
(Friday's) paper.
Thanks for your help.
Jim Evans
San Francisco Daily Journal
408/287-4866
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Nov 14 2007 - 20:49:02 PST