Environmental Quality Research, Inc. v. Mercantile Trust National Ass'n

854 S.W.2d 500, 1993 Mo. App. LEXIS 440, 1993 WL 88124
CourtMissouri Court of Appeals
DecidedMarch 30, 1993
Docket61587
StatusPublished
Cited by15 cases

This text of 854 S.W.2d 500 (Environmental Quality Research, Inc. v. Mercantile Trust National Ass'n) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Missouri Court of Appeals primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Environmental Quality Research, Inc. v. Mercantile Trust National Ass'n, 854 S.W.2d 500, 1993 Mo. App. LEXIS 440, 1993 WL 88124 (Mo. Ct. App. 1993).

Opinion

*501 CRANE, Judge.

Plaintiff brought a two count action against the defendant bank for damages arising out of the bank’s action in stopping payment on a cashier’s check. After a trial on the merits, the jury returned a verdict in favor of defendant bank and the trial court entered judgment thereon. Plaintiff appeals, contending that the trial court erred in giving Instruction 7 which set out defendant’s affirmative defense of failure of consideration. We do not reach the merits of the claim of instructional error. We dismiss the appeal on the ground that the record on appeal is insufficient under either Rule 81.12(a) or 81.16.

Rule 81.12(a) provides that the record on appeal “shall contain all of the record, proceedings and evidence necessary to the determination of all questions to be presented_” Under this rule the appellant must file a transcript and prepare a legal file so that the record contains all the evidence necessary for a determination of questions presented to the appellate court for a decision. Cain v. Rickart, 781 S.W.2d 265, 266 (Mo.App.1989).

The rules recognize and provide for certain situations in which a full record is not required. Where an appellant desires to raise only legal questions with respect to instructions given and a review of the evidence is unnecessary to pass on those legal questions, the appellant can proceed under Rule 81.16. That rule provides that it is not necessary for the appellant to include the evidence in the record on appeal. However, it does give an appellant the option of designating evidence to be included in the record on appeal. It requires an appellant to file and serve “a designation of the parts of the trial record, proceedings, and evidence which he intends to include in the record on appeal and a statement of issues he intends to present on appeal.” The statement of issues is further required to show “what material facts the evidence tended to prove.”

Rule 81.16 further provides that a respondent shall serve and file a designation of any additional parts of the trial record, proceedings and evidence that respondent deems necessary and any additional issues respondent intends to present on appeal. The rule ends with the following caution: “Failure of the respondent to serve and file such indication shall constitute an admission and agreement that the respondent agrees that the statement is correct and that a transcript of the evidence need not be included in the record on appeal.”

Plaintiff attempted to proceed under Rule 81.16. It filed a document with three designated parts. Part I listed 10 issues which plaintiff intended to present on appeal relating to Instruction 7. Instruction 7 submitted defendant’s affirmative defense under § 400.3-306 RSMo 1986 of failure of consideration against one who is not a holder in due course.

Part II consisted of the following paragraph:

The facts which the following stated evidence and record in III below will tend to prove are, that failure of consideration was not sufficiently proved, that the failure of consideration, if any, was on the part of a person (EDN) different than the plaintiff; that plaintiff gave, in the form of services rendered, sufficient consideration to EDN for the funds represented by the $8,400.00 cashier’s check; That plaintiff, in good faith, changed its position in reliance on payment, that there was no proper evidence linking the EDN bank account to any purchase of the cashier’s check or linking plaintiff to the purchase of the cashier’s check.

Part III designated parts of the record and evidence intended to be included in the record which included the testimony of two witnesses. Defendant did not designate any additional issues for appeal or any additional parts of the record, proceedings or evidence necessary to the appeal in response to this document. Simultaneously with its filing of its Rule 81.16 document, plaintiff filed a designation of the contents of the legal file and a statement that the record on appeal would be composed of a legal file and a transcript. Plaintiff also filed a letter addressed to the court report *502 er requesting the preparation of the transcript as designated.

Plaintiff sought and obtained an 83 day extension to file the transcript due to the court reporter’s backlog. Plaintiff subsequently filed a transcript which did not contain any of the evidence listed in its designation. Instead the transcript contained two sentences from defense counsel’s opening statement, two offers of proof that were not before the jury, and plaintiff’s motion for directed verdict. This record is wholly inadequate to review the issues raised.

In the first place, the issues raised by plaintiff on appeal do not relate solely to legal questions, but require a review of the evidence. Plaintiff’s points on appeal challenge Instruction 7 on factual as well as legal grounds. As part of its second point plaintiff contends that “the instruction was erroneous, because neither the facts hypothesized nor the facts of the case supported a finding of failure of consideration in the purchase of the cashier’s check.” (emphasis added).

Furthermore plaintiff’s overall contention in both points one and two that Instruction 7 was erroneous requires a review of the evidence. There is no MAI instruction for the defense of failure of consideration against one who is not a holder in due course. Since there is no MAI instruction, any error in an instruction given on that defense is not presumptively prejudicial, as it would be if the instruction had deviated from an applicable MAI instruction. Sooter v. Magic Lantern, 771 S.W.2d 359, 362 (Mo.App.1989). In this situation the burden of demonstrating prejudice falls on the party challenging the instruction. Id. Even if plaintiff could show that Instruction 7 failed to follow the substantive law or was defective in other respects, plaintiff must still demonstrate that the error resulted in prejudice to its cause. Hall v. Cooper, 691 S.W.2d 507, 510 (Mo.App.1985). This requires a review of the evidence on appeal. Id. Under these circumstances, plaintiff should not have attempted to proceed under Rule 81.-16.

We have examined the record plaintiff did file and find it wholly inadequate to enable us to review whether Instruction 7 was supported by the evidence or was prejudicial. The record consists of a legal file, two exhibits (the cashier’s check and a bank statement), and a partial transcript which contained only proceedings that were not in evidence. As a result of plaintiff’s failure to file a transcript containing any of the admitted evidence at trial, plaintiff cannot satisfy its burden of demonstrating prejudicial error.

Plaintiff argues that, because defendant did not file a counterdesignation to plaintiffs Rule 81.16 designation of issues and record, it was not required to file a transcript, citing Rule 81.16, and was not required to file any evidence, citing Scarato v. Hayward, 446 S.W.2d 135, 136 (Mo.App. 1969).

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Bluebook (online)
854 S.W.2d 500, 1993 Mo. App. LEXIS 440, 1993 WL 88124, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/environmental-quality-research-inc-v-mercantile-trust-national-assn-moctapp-1993.