Springfield Young Women's Christian Ass'n v. Evers

The defendant filed a timely notice of appeal from the judgment in April, 1987, and ordered transcripts of the testimony. By August, 1987, three court reporters had furnished transcripts, but a fourth, who had moved out of Massachusetts after the trial, failed to produce transcripts of three days of testimony (including that of two central witnesses). Repeated attempts by the defendant’s counsel to elicit the missing transcripts ended in August, 1988, when the stenographer reported that the transcripts had been completed but had been stolen from her car. The plaintiff’s counsel had been…