P.R. Laws Ap. tit. 4A, § II-A, Rule 15
(a) Judicial records under the custody of the Clerk shall not be taken out of their respective parts except by a written order from the Administrative Judge. They shall not be taken out of the office of the Clerk either, except for the use of the court, or the judges. The Clerk shall keep the necessary registers to reveal the true situation of any particular record at any time.
This rule shall apply to the court stenographer’s notebooks, the stenotype and magnetiphonic tapes [o]n which the hearings of the cases in the part have been taken.
(b) The Clerks of the courts shall keep all the books required by law. The Clerks are empowered to make the minute book by collecting and binding the original of the minutes according to the rules fixed by the Administrative Director of the Courts with the approval of the Chief Justice.
(c) In the municipalities where a part of the District Court has not been established and where a municipal judge has been assigned to render services, a docket of criminal cases shall be kept where the secretary of the municipal judge shall file the cases authorized by law regarding which the said magistrate receives pleas of guilty and imposes sentences.
(d) When one or several of the documents which make up a record is lost or destroyed, or when the record itself is lost or destroyed, the Clerk shall notify the Administrative Judge within the next 24 working hours from the moment in which he learns of said loss. The Administrative Judge shall take the necessary steps to locate the document or record; Provided, That, if during the next 48 working hours all efforts prove unsuccessful, the parties shall be summoned to a hearing to be held no later than ten (10) days thereafter. At said hearing, the lost document will be substituted or the whole record reconstructed, as the case may be. The hearing shall be held before the judge who has been assigned the case or, in default thereof, before the Administrative Judge.
In the event the record lost or destroyed is an inactive one deposited in the Central Archives of the Judicial Branch, the Director of the Program for the Preservation and Disposal of Documents of the Judicial Branch shall prepare a report to the Administrative Director of the Courts certifying said loss pursuant to the Rules for the Administration of said program. Should it be necessary, the Administrative Judge of the pertinent court division shall substitute the lost document or reconstruct the whole record, as the case may be, following the foregoing procedure and bearing in mind the provisions contained in the Rules for the Administration of the Program for the Preservation and Disposal of Documents of the Judicial Branch.
History —May 23, 1975; Dec. 17, 1975; Sept. 22, 1977.