Court Reporter Relationships & Recusal

It’s Monday night, and one of the agencies for whom you work has called and asked you to cover a series of depositions for the next day that are anticipated to last all day. They email the witness list and case caption to you, and you enter into your dictionary all of the anticipated outlines. When your job dictionary is built, you pack everything up and set it next to your front door, ready for Tuesday’s assignment.

The next morning you arrive at the deposition site with time to spare, you are ushered into the conference room, where you proceed to set up your equipment, and everyone listed on the notice arrives and seats themselves neatly around the conference table. The first witness is ushered in, you place him under oath, and he’s a dream witness. He waits for counsel to finish asking each question before answering, and he answers clearly and concisely. In no time at all, his deposition concludes, and plaintiff’s counsel ushers in the next witness. You are expecting the gentleman listed on the notice, but instead, in walks your sister. She takes one look at you seated behind your steno machine, and you suddenly pop up like a jumping bean. Almost as if on cue, you ask one another quizzically, “What are you doing here?” At that moment, plaintiff’s counsel asks you both, “How do you know each other?” at which point, again simultaneously, you both respond, “She’s my sister.”

How your sister ended up in the witness chair without your knowing about her involvement in any sort of civil suit, much less the one you’re there to report, isn’t the most important hurdle for you to tackle at that moment. It’s now been established that you are related to the deponent, and counsel has a right to object or waive any objection to your reporting the proceeding. Counsel may also choose to ask you whether you feel capable of remaining impartial.  In order to “guard against not only the fact but the appearance of impropriety,” as set forth in Provision 3 of the Code of Professional Ethics (COPE) of the National Court Reporters Association (NCRA), you may want to consider withdrawing from reporting not only that witness, but the remaining witnesses noticed, as well as any further depositions in the case.

Advisory Opinions 2 and 3 of NCRA’s Code of Professional Ethics discuss the importance of disclosing any reporter relationship to counsel or the parties, to give counsel the opportunity to object or waive any objection and, should an objection be raised, for the reporter to withdraw and make way for a replacement.  As the “reporter of record” and an integral part of the judicial system, we are obligated to maintain the integrity of our profession.