(a) District courts always open. The district courts shall be deemed always open for the purpose of filing any pleading or other proper paper, of issuing and returning mesne and final process, and of making and directing all interlocutory motions, orders, and rules.

(b) Trials and hearings; orders in chambers. All trials upon the merits shall be conducted in open court and so far as convenient in a regular courtroom. All other acts or proceedings may be done or conducted by a judge in chambers without the attendance of the clerk or other court officials and at any place within the state, either within or without the district; but no hearing, other than one ex parte, shall be conducted outside the county wherein the matter is pending without the consent of all the parties to the action affected thereby.

(c) Clerk's office and orders by clerk. The clerk's office with the clerk or a deputy in attendance shall be open during business hours on all days except Saturdays, Sundays, and legal holidays. All motions and applications in the clerk's office for issuing mesne process, for issuing final process to enforce and execute judgments, for entering defaults or judgments by default, and for other proceedings which do not require allowance or order of the court are grantable of course by the clerk; but such action may be suspended or altered or rescinded by the court upon cause shown.

Advisory Committee Notes

Subdivision (d), deleted by the 1999 amendment, prohibited the sheriff, constable and clerk from charging a fee for a certified copy when the copy was furnished by the person requesting the copy. The subdivision was deleted on two grounds:

(1) The Supreme Court has no authority to regulate fees charged by a sheriff or constable.

(2) In order to certify a document as a true copy of an original, the clerk must either copy the original or compare, word-by-word, the copy to the original. The latter is much more difficult, time consuming and costly than the former, yet it was in the latter case that the fee was waived.