§ 25-2732.Testimony; preservation; bill of exceptions; cost.

An appeal from county court is only as good as the record it rests on, and section 25-2732 governs how that record of testimony gets made. As a default, testimony in civil and criminal county court cases is preserved by multi-track recorders, though the court retains discretion to order a court reporter in any given case instead.

The recording equipment itself is not left to chance. The Supreme Court prescribes the standards for that equipment and the rules for using it, and those standards must require equipment capable of multiple-track recording and of instantaneous monitoring by the clerk or another court employee running it. That monitoring requirement means someone is listening in real time to catch a malfunction before it costs the record.

When the recorded testimony needs to become part of an appeal, it goes through a conversion process. The transcription of that testimony, once certified by the stenographer or court reporter who prepared it and settled by the court, becomes the bill of exceptions in the case. The cost of preparing that bill of exceptions falls initially on the party for whom it is prepared. Every step of getting there — preparation, settlement, signature, allowance, certification, filing, and amendment of the bill of exceptions — follows rules of practice the Supreme Court prescribes, keeping the process uniform across county courts.