Report

n. An official or formal statement of facts or proceedings. Report, V.: to make a statement of facts or Mailing a letter, prepaid and properly addressed, to an insurance company, if done by general direction of their agent, satisfies a condition in a policy that the facts stated in the letter shall be " reported " to the company.

Edwards v. Mississippi Valley Ins. Co., 1 Mo. App. 192. ' Reports of committees.

These pertain to legislative and parliamentary practice. Questions arising oii legisla^ tion, both of law and of fact, are constantly referred to committees for preliminary investigation; and the report of a committee is the usual basis upon •which a bill or measure is brought forward in the house for deliberate discussion and passage. Reports of the courts. Published volumes containing accounts of judicial decisions are termed the reports, or reports of cases. A full report of a case, in this sense, usually contains a brief statement of the important facts, an abridgment of the argument of counsel, and the opinion of the court, either as furnished by the judge or judges in writing, or as taken down by the reporter, when orally delivered; and these are preceded by a brief statement of the points decided, called head-notes. But the preparation and arrangement of these is purely a literaiy duty. The good sense and judgment of the reporter are his guides in the execution of the task, in most jurisdictions. In some of the states, he is directed in respect to what decisions shall be reported, and what features his reports shall contain, by statutes and rules of court. The series of reports compiled by Lord Coke have been veiy generally styled The Reports, par excellence, as it were, and cited without the author's name. Report of commissioner, master, receiver, or referee. The official statement drawn up by a commissioner of court, master in chanceiy, receiver, or judicial referee, to whom a cause or question has been referred, the evidence he has collected, or the decision or computation he has made, or of his dealings with property or funds committed to his charge. The similar statement of an arbitrator, as to his decision, is not person who is appointed or voluntarily assumes to edit and superintend the publication of reports of the courts, q. V. In England, this duty was formerly an individual or private undertaking. Since the commencement of 1866, the chief reporting has been done under the superintendence of a council styled the incorporated council of law reporting for England and Wales. In the courts of the United States, the reports ai-e, for the most part, prepared by or under the direction of the judges. The reporter to the supreme court, however, enjoys a legislative recognition of hia office, in a permanent appropriation of a sum in compensation of his furnishing to government three hundred copies of his reports; and there is usually a congressional appropriation in support of the reports of the court of claims. In many of the states, the reporter of the court of last resort (and in New York the supreme court reporter also) is a salaried officer of the state. But besides these authorized reports are many series, authorized only by appointment of the courts, and depending for pecuniary support only upon publishers' sales; and some compile without even a formal judicial appointment, and winning favor according to the value of the cases reported and merits of the reporter's inethod. As will be inferred from the above remarks, the term reporter is only applicable to one who prepares reports of courts. It is not in use in reference to legislative, or to master's or referee's, reports.