Rule 81.17.Record on Appeal--Reviewing Legal Effect of Instructions, Evidence Not Necessary, When.

Rule 81.17 is a narrow shortcut for appeals that turn entirely on jury instructions. When the appellant wants review only of legal questions about instructions given or refused, and reviewing the evidence is not necessary to decide those legal questions, the appellant does not have to include the evidence in the record on appeal at all. Instead, within thirty days after the last notice of appeal is filed, the appellant serves the respondent and files in the appellate court a designation of the parts of the trial record it intends to include and a statement of the issues it intends to raise, including what material fact or facts the evidence tended to prove.

The respondent gets a say. If the respondent thinks other parts of the record are necessary, it has ten days after service of the appellant's statement to serve and file its own designation of additional parts and any additional issues it wants to raise. If the respondent does nothing within that time, that silence is treated as an admission that the appellant's statement is correct and that a transcript of the evidence does not need to be part of the record.