Upon Further Review
There’s a saying in Pennsylvania state appellate jurisprudence that if the record on appeal does not reflect that something happened in the trial court, then that thing — even if it actually did happen in the trial court — will officially be deemed not to have happened. It is thus not too great of a stretch to observe that the record on appeal may represent, in essence, an alternate form of reality — and the only “reality” that is capable of controlling the outcome of an appeal.
