On Fri, 23 Dec 1994, Cindy Chick wrote:
> On the other hand, it does seem that things could get weird with paragaph
> numbering when you start adding paragraph 4A because the judge wanted
> to add or amend something. With virtual pages, you would end up
> with one page longer than others, but there would be no way
> to tell what on that page had been added or changed. With paragraph
> numbers it would be fairly obvious. I can just see my attorneys
> pouring over the book and debating the meaning of the fact
> that the judge had added a particular paragraph later. That's really my
> point concerning conveying unintended information. Who knows whether that
> would really be a problem.
The problems you ascribe to paragraph numbers exist also with the virtual
page as well. After all, the court could have deleted a page as well as
a paragraph, or added a page as well as a paragraph, or indeed the
"virtual" page break could fall in the middle of a sentence or pargraph
deleted. So what. And, of course there may be a meaning in the court
adding a paragraph later ... in general, a paragraph added as an
amendment certainly increases its meaning. The court may intend indeed
to have extra meaning ascribed or it may not. That is what a lawyer does
is make a judgment as to whether it does.
>
> It does seem to me that you're correct .... you would have to embed the
> page number in some manner. But that can't be that hard. After all,
> you're talking about embedding the paragraph number. I suspect it would
> be easier to embed the page number than to figure out exactly what
> constitutes and paragraph and what doesn't.
It may be equally easy to paginate as well a paragraph number, but,
subsequently, for republished versions of the opinion in different media
and different size pages, the paragraph number is far easier to deal with.
>
> But hey, since the courts are the ones that have to do the work, I'd be
> tempted to let them decide. Oops, sorry, I guess they were the ones that
> thought we didn't need an alternate cite to begin with. :-)
Actually, the court reporter association did in fact state that for
unpublished opinions, paragraph numbers were to be favored and some
courts do favor alternate cites.
Alan Sugarman
HyperLaw
sugarman@panix.com
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