NEW YORK — Fed up with the military’s limits on access to the court martial of Bradley Manning, the Army private who has admitted to sending hundreds of thousands of sensitive documents to the transparency organization WikiLeaks, a nonprofit group announced Thursday that it is crowdfunding a court stenographer to create daily trial transcripts.

The Freedom of the Press Foundation hopes to hire one or possibly two stenographers to provide reporters and the public with transcripts within 12 to 24 hours of proceedings in the trial, which begins June 3. Although Manning has admitted to charges that could bring a prison term of up to 20 years, the government is still prosecuting him on more serious charges of aiding the enemy and violating the Espionage Act, which could result in a life sentence.

“When it comes to freedom of information, leaks and whistleblowers, this is one of the most important trials in 40 years,” said Trevor Timm, the group’s executive director. “As even detractors of Manning will say, this really could affect future whistleblowers, and it’s vital to the public to be able to see exactly what arguments the government is making.”

The Freedom of the Press Foundation was launched in December in large part to serve as a conduit for donations to groups like WikiLeaks. In March, the group also  released audio of Manning’s statement, recorded in violation of court rules, in which he admitted guilt on some charges.

Timm acknowledged that his group has been outspoken in its defense of WikiLeaks’ right to release classified documents, and that it considers Manning to be a whistleblower. But he said the group’s sole goal in hiring the stenographer is to create “a historical record that’s as accurate as possible.” He estimates the group will need to raise $40,000 to $50,000 on its website.

So far the military and the judge in Manning’s court martial, Col. Denise Lind, have released few of the critical documents in the case. No official public transcripts of pretrial hearings have been produced, and even official court rulings have often been read aloud in court at a clip of 180 words per minute instead of released on paper.

“The public has been cut off from a lot of avenues of information from this trial,” said Timm. “These strict rules kind of hide what’s going on in this trial.”

Instead it’s fallen to a group of mostly independent journalists to cover the daily ins and outs of the trial. The Freedom of the Press Foundation also announced that it had awarded grants to two of those independent journalists, Kevin Gosztola of FireDogLake and blogger Alexa O’Brien, who has been writing her own unofficial transcripts, to continue their coverage of the trial.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE – Huffington Post

 By KENNETH OFGANG, Staff Writer

 The sole means of challenging a court reporter’s fees for deposition transcripts as excessive is by motion filed in the action in which the depositions were taken, the Court of Appeal for this district ruled yesterday.

Div. Six affirmed the dismissal of an equitable action seeking an injunction on behalf of a class made up of litigants who had purchased transcripts of depositions taken by various defendants—including Merrill Communications, LLC and its subsidiary Wordwave, Inc., which Merrill has described as the world’s largest court reporting and transcription firm—over a four-year period.

The plaintiff, The Los Canoas Company, Inc., alleged that it was added as a defendant in a construction defects case in Santa Barbara Superior Court several years ago, after 57 depositions had been taken. The company said it inquired of the court reporters how much it would cost to obtain copies of the transcripts, and was told $2 per page.

The company said it objected to the charge, which would have run to $16,000 for copies of all 57 depositions. Instead, it paid about $1,200 for copies of three of the depositions. While it made its objections known to the court reporters, the company did not seek to have the rate reduced by the court.

About four years later, the company filed suit. It sought an injunction limiting the defendants’ charges for transcripts to 25 cents per page, or flat rates of between $15 and $35 for electronic copies, depending on the mode of transmission.

Demurred Sustained

Ventura Superior Court Judge Mark Borrell sustained a demurrer, ruling that the company should have filed a motion under Code of Civil Procedure Secs. 2025.510 and 128(a)(5), which allow trial courts to determine the reasonableness of court reporters’ charges for copies of transcripts. The judge cited Serrano v. Stefan Merli Plastering Co., Inc. (2008) 162 Cal.App.4th 1014, which suggested that the statutes could be enforced upon motion of a party that did not notice a deposition.

Borrell wrote:

“The deposition process is central to the administration of civil litigation, and court reporters, as deposition officers, are officers of the court and subject to the court’s supervision. A non-noticing party’s right to obtain a deposition transcript at a reasonable fee is statutory, and the means to enforce that right is by motion to the judge presiding over the action in which the deposition is conducted. That judge is in the ‘best position’ to resolve any dispute. Reserving the issue to be subsequently determined by another judge would undermine the discretion vested in the original trial judge to control proceedings in his or her courtroom.”

He also said the request for injunctive relief was “[p]articularly troublesome” because granting it would “directly abridge the discretion of judges assigned to future cases to determine the reasonableness of defendant’s fees.”

Presiding Justice Arthur Gilbert, writing for the Court of Appeal, agreed.

No Extraordinary Circumstances

He acknowledged that nothing in the statutes or in Serrano expressly precluded a separate action to determine the reasonableness of transcript fees. But the concerns expressed by the trial judge, he said, illustrate why “absent extraordinary circumstances, the court in the action in which the dispute arises is the only court to resolve the issue.”

The case is The Las Canoas Company, Inc. v. Kramer, 13 S.O.S. 2335.

Original Article: MetNews