Failure To Produce Documents
A continuance (a rescheduling of a court hearing at a later date) of a civil action may be granted due to the absence of documents or papers. The party failing to produce the documents requested by a subpoena duces tecum must show good reason why there was a failure to do so. Acceptable explanations have included loss or destruction of papers, or an agreement to use copies. The party seeking the continuance must show that the absence of the documents is not because of the negligence of their own, or of the attorney of record.
Similarly, a continuance may be granted in a criminal case if there is good reason documents pertinent to the case could not be produced at the time of trial. For example, a continuance should be granted for failure to produce a transcript of testimony given at a previous trial. In general, it is reversible error to proceed with a criminal trial in the absence of a previous trial transcript, when such contains pertinent information that should have been considered in the new trial. In these cases, a continuance is the usual remedy. The trial judge or magistrate is the one who issues the continuance.
Read more about this topic: Subpoena Duces Tecum
Famous quotes containing the words failure to, failure, produce and/or documents:
“Mothers are likely to have more bad days on the job than most other professionals, considering the hours: round-the-clock, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year. . . . You go to work when you’re sick, maybe even clinically depressed, because motherhood is perhaps the only unpaid position where failure to show up can result in arrest.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)
“The failure of women to produce genius of the first rank in most of the supreme forms of human effort has been used to block the way of all women of talent and ambition for intellectual achievement.”
—Anna Garlin Spencer (1851–1931)
“How can you tell if you discipline effectively? Ask yourself if your disciplinary methods generally produce lasting results in a manner you find acceptable. Whether your philosophy is democratic or autocratic, whatever techniques you use—reasoning, a “star” chart, time-outs, or spanking—if it doesn’t work, it’s not effective.”
—Stanley Turecki (20th century)
“The American Constitution, one of the few modern political documents drawn up by men who were forced by the sternest circumstances to think out what they really had to face instead of chopping logic in a university classroom.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)