When It Pays to Transcribe Hearings...
You're sued for breach of an oral contract. You get all the way to a bench trial, call witnesses, and, in the end, thankfully get a ruling in your favor. Moreover, you didn't even incur the cost of having to transcribe the hearing.
Low and behold, on appeal, the parties suddenly have different recollections regarding what the Court actually held. The Court of Appeals can't discern what the Court's findings were because there is no record of the hearing. The result...your judgment is vacated and the case is remanded.
The moral of the story: If you want a ruling to hold up, there better be some record of the findings of fact and law that supported the ruling. Relying on the recollection of the attorneys and parties involved always seems to prove problematic for some reason...
A link to the opinion in Martin v. Long is available here.