Short answer. The clerk of court must inform the Court of Appeals and recommend measures to complete the record, and it becomes the court's duty to take appropriate action to complete the record within the shortest possible time, under Rule 44, Section 5.
What the law says
Where the record of the docketed case is incomplete, the clerk of court of the Court of Appeals shall so inform said court and recommend to it measures necessary to complete the record.
Rule 44, Section 5 — Completion of record. Read the full provision →
What the law says
It shall be the duty of said court to take appropriate action towards the completion of the record within the shortest possible time.
Rule 44, Section 5 — Completion of record. Read the full provision →
The clerk of court flags the gap
Responsibility for spotting an incomplete record does not fall on the parties alone. Section 5 places the first duty on the court's own staff: where the record of the docketed case is incomplete, the clerk of court of the Court of Appeals shall so inform said court and recommend to it measures necessary to complete the record. That obligation attaches as soon as the case is docketed, not only once a party complains.
The court itself must then act
Once flagged, the completion of the record becomes the court's own obligation, not merely a suggestion to the parties. It shall be the duty of said court to take appropriate action towards the completion of the record within the shortest possible time. The rule frames this as a duty, using mandatory language rather than leaving it optional, and it ties the court to acting quickly rather than at its own convenience.
What this means for a party watching the case
A party whose appeal seems stalled because the record is incomplete is not without recourse — the mechanism in Section 5 is meant to be the court's own initiative, prompted by its clerk. Still, nothing prevents a party from bringing an incomplete record to the court's attention directly if the process appears to be lagging, since ensuring the record is whole ultimately serves everyone's interest in a fair decision.
How this connects to Section 6's fallback
Section 5's completion duty is the first line of response to a gap in the record; Section 6 is the backstop for the rare case where completion proves genuinely impossible despite that effort. Read together, the two sections show the Rules do not simply abandon an appeal to a defective record — the court must first try to complete it, and only turns to deciding on what is available once that effort has been exhausted for reasons beyond the parties' or the court's control.
Related provisions
- Rule 44, Section 5 — Completion of record
- Rule 44, Section 4 — Docketing of case
- Rule 44, Section 6 — Dispensing with complete record