The Stipulation Read from an Unmarked Copy
You are reporting a bench trial in a wrongful death action in Madison County. Plaintiff's counsel reads a nine-minute written stipulation of facts into the record. Your notes show the following: 'Pursuant to seven thirty-five ILCS five, section two dash one thousand fifteen'; the decedent as 'Xiomara Peña-Fuentes - P-E-Ñ-A, hyphen, F-U-E-N-T-E-S'; 'the doctrine of res ipsa loquitur - loquitir, I'm sorry, loquitur'; 'quote, the standard of care is ordinary care under the circumstances, ellipsis, unquote'; 'one million two hundred fifty thousand dollars, parenthesis, one comma two five zero comma zero zero zero dollars, close parenthesis'; and, after reading a witness's answer aloud, counsel says 's-i-c.' The stipulation was pre-marked as Exhibit 12, but counsel is reading from an unmarked typewritten copy that contains a paragraph he describes as 'just a harmless summary.' Opposing counsel objects that the stipulation 'speaks for itself' and that the added paragraph was never disclosed. The judge takes the objection under advisement and tells counsel to continue.
1. How do you render the statute citation, the Latin phrase with the self-correction, and the spoken 'quote … ellipsis … unquote'?
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Render the words as spoken, but in standard written forms.
- Statute. Write 735 ILCS 5/2-1015. The reading of digits as words is a pronunciation convention, not a change in content, and standard citation form is what a reader needs. If you cannot confirm the section number from the marked exhibit, flag it for verification after the session rather than inventing a number; a wrong citation in a certified transcript is worse than a bracketed query resolved later with counsel.
- Latin and self-correction. Write res ipsa loquitur. The witness said the phrase correctly after a slip of pronunciation; pronunciation is not transcribed. A restart is a disfluency, not a substitution of words. If the speaker had said a genuinely different word that changed meaning, you would keep it and add '[sic]'. Here the corrected form is the accurate report of what was meant and said.
- Quote markers. Because counsel announced 'quote' and 'unquote,' use quotation marks around the material and render the spoken ellipsis as …. If the ellipsis exists in the written stipulation, verify against Exhibit 12; if counsel merely paused, the ellipsis is still defensible because he announced it. Be consistent throughout the passage, and do not add quotation marks where counsel did not signal quotation.
2. How should the dollar amount and the spoken 'sic' be handled?
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Dollar amount. Render it once, in numerals: $1,250,000. Counsel was reading a document that spells the sum and then parenthetically repeats it in figures; reproducing both layers produces a transcript that is painful to read and no more accurate. The conventional solution is to give the figure in standard form at the point of utterance. If you want to preserve the reading of the document, set the passage in quotation marks and give the sum in figures - but do not mechanically convert 'comma' and 'parenthesis' into punctuation inside an unquoted colloquy, because that misrepresents how counsel spoke.
Spoken 'sic.' '[Sic]' signals that an error appears in the original material, not that the speaker made a slip of the tongue. Because counsel is reading a document and announced the marker aloud, place [sic] immediately after the error in the quoted passage, verified against Exhibit 12. If the error was counsel's own misreading rather than the document's text, do not use [sic]; transcribe what he said, and if the misstatement is material, you may note the discrepancy in a bracketed editor's note only with the court's approval. The marker should be rare and always accurate.
3. What do you do about the unmarked copy with the extra paragraph?
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Your duty is to record what was said, not to decide what the stipulation legally is - but the discrepancy is exactly the kind of thing that must not be lost.
First, transcribe the added paragraph verbatim, because it was read aloud in open court and is therefore in the record. Second, transcribe the objection, the colloquy about the copy and the court's ruling ('under advisement') precisely. Third, at the next natural break - not by interrupting the reading - tell the judge on the record that the marked Exhibit 12 and the copy being read appear to differ, so the court can make a record of which text governs. A short statement such as 'Your Honor, for the record, the copy being read is not the marked exhibit' protects the transcript and is not advocacy.
Do not substitute the exhibit's text for what was read, and do not annotate the transcript with your own conclusion about which version is correct. If the judge later rules that the extra paragraph is excluded, the ruling will appear in the transcript and the appellate court can evaluate it; the transcript should show the reading, the objection and the ruling in sequence.