Florida Rule of Appellate Procedure 9.200 dictates what documents shall be included in the record on appeal.\u00a0 In relevant part, the rule states:<\/p>\n
Except as otherwise designated by the parties, the record shall consist of the original documents, exhibits, and transcripts(s) of proceedings, if any, filed in the lower tribunal\u2026. <\/em><\/p>\n 9.200(a)(1), Fla. R. App. P.\u00a0 The record, and the documents that comprise the record, become of great import when an appellate court is reviewing a final decision of a lower tribunal.\u00a0 Generally, decisions of lower courts are presumed to be correct and unless the presumption of correctness is overcome by matters crystallized in the record of the proceedings, the appellate court will affirm the order or judgment on review.\u00a0 There are, however, instances in which a document that was not formally filed in the lower tribunal may be permitted to supplement the record on appeal.<\/p>\n For example, we recently handled a family law appeal wherein a psychologist in the case below rendered an opinion that the wife had been the victim of battered spouse syndrome throughout the marriage.\u00a0 At trial, however, the doctor testified orally but his deposition testimony was never entered into evidence.\u00a0 Nevertheless, opposing trial counsel sought to impeach the doctor\u2019s oral testimony and alluded to his deposition testimony in an attempt to show that the doctor\u2019s opinion had changed from the time of the deposition to that of trial.<\/p>\n One of the findings the trial court made in its final order was that the doctor had changed his expert opinion at trial from that which he gave at his deposition.\u00a0 On appeal, we sought to introduce the doctor\u2019s deposition testimony to show that his opinion had not in fact changed when he gave his oral testimony at trial.\u00a0 We filed a motion to supplement the record on appeal with the doctor\u2019s deposition testimony, pursuant to Fla. R. App. P. 9.200(f).\u00a0 Opposing appellate counsel objected to our motion on the ground that the doctor\u2019s deposition was not entered into evidence.\u00a0 The District Court, however, ruled in our favor, based on our argument that the trial court below relied upon the deposition testimony to the extent the final order included a finding that the doctor\u2019s deposition testimony changed at trial.\u00a0 Therefore, as you can see factual situations do arise in which a District Court may permit the record on appeal to be supplemented with a document that was not officially included in the record, even over the objection of opposing counsel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Florida Rule of Appellate Procedure 9.200 dictates what documents shall be included in the record on appeal.\u00a0 In relevant part, the rule states: Except as otherwise designated by the parties, the record shall consist of the original documents, exhibits, and transcripts(s) of proceedings, if any, filed in the lower tribunal\u2026. 9.200(a)(1), Fla. R. App. P.\u00a0…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1855,1856,1857],"class_list":["post-2247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-appellate-court","tag-deposition","tag-family-law"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssrga.com\/appellate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssrga.com\/appellate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssrga.com\/appellate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssrga.com\/appellate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssrga.com\/appellate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ssrga.com\/appellate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2247\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssrga.com\/appellate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssrga.com\/appellate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssrga.com\/appellate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}