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Tag Archives: Appellate Procedure

Why Automatic Deletion of Spam Email Causing Failure to File a Timely Appeal Is Not Excusable Neglect.

30 Saturday Sep 2017

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in Calendar/Docketing, Emails, Law Office Management, Legal Ethics, Legal Technology, Office Procedures, Technology

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Appellate Procedure, Email Configuration, Excusable Neglect, Spam

(With hat tip to William P. Statsky)

My home email software has a spam folder where unwanted emails go to die – eventually. I must deliberately choose to send an email to the spam folder. Then, I must decide whether let it remain in perpetual limbo as spam, block it, or delete it.

Imagine the number of emails routinely sent and received by most law firms.  My computer’s email setup would not be practical.  But, when it comes to email configuration, there are good choices and bad ones. A Florida law firm rejected recommended safeguards to snag spam and allow someone, other than the computer, to decide whether to delete the email. That decision, along with others, turned out to be a bad call.

Here are the facts. The trial court’s court clerk served an order by email on the parties. The order awarded a significant amount of attorney fees to the appellee. The appellant claimed it did not receive the emailed order, which is why it failed timely to file an appeal. What happened? The firm’s email system automatically deleted the court clerk’s email and attached order as spam.

The appellant appealed and asked the court to vacate the original order and reenter the order to allow the appellant to appeal. Its email deletion error was “excusable neglect.” Not so said that trial court, and the Florida’s First District Court of Appeal affirmed.

The appellate court gave several specific reasons for rejecting the appellant’s argument.  First, the review of the court clerk’s email logs confirmed that the email with the court’s order was served and received by the law firm’s server. Second, the law firm’s email configuration made it impossible to determine whether the firm’s server received the email. Third, the law firm’s former IT specialist’s advice against this configuration flaw was deliberately rejected by the law firm because its alternative cost more money.

The trial court concluded the law firm made a conscious decision to use a defective email configuration merely to save money, which was not “excusable neglect.”

Another nail in the coffin was testimony by the appellee’s attorney. His firm assigned a paralegal to check the court’s website every three weeks to safeguard that his firm would not miss any orders or deadlines.  The court held that the appellant had a duty to check the court’s electronic docket.

What’s the moral here? Lawyers must configure their computer systems to prevent this costly error. And they must employ a “meaningful procedure” to prevent the series of events that caused this fatal error.

I rather liked the idea of the paralegal assigned to check the court’s online file. In this instance, the paralegal checked it every three weeks. I would modify this depending on the notice time required by your court’s rules.

I recommend reading the entire opinion for its analysis on “excusable neglect.” You can find the opinion here: http://bit.ly/2xI3gGB. -CCE

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The Right Way to Assemble Attachments To Appellate Supervisory Writs.

17 Saturday Jan 2015

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in Appellate Law, Appellate Writing, Legal Writing, Louisiana Supreme Court, Readability

≈ Comments Off on The Right Way to Assemble Attachments To Appellate Supervisory Writs.

Tags

Appellate Law, Appellate Procedure, Appellate Writs, Legal Writing, Louisiana Civil Appeals, Raymond P. Ward

Practical Tip For Assembling A Writ Application, by Raymond P. Ward, Louisiana Civil Appeals

http://tinyurl.com/o2or5jy

Today [January 14. 2015] I started working on an application to the court of appeal for a supervisory writ, and was reminded of my # 1 tip for this task: the first thing you do—before you write a word—is assemble the attachments. Uniform Rule 4-5 lists the attachments that must be included. I like to put them all together and give them provisional page numbers before I start writing the application itself, starting with A1, A2, etc. If your attachments are in PDF (if they’re not, they should be), putting them together and page-numbering them is a snap with Adobe Acrobat or other PDF-handling software.

Assembling the appendix on the front end has at least two advantages. First, when you draft the writ application, you can include pinpoint citations to items in the appendix. Second, you find out immediately if you’re missing something that you need (such as the hearing transcript).

There is one little hitch to my system: Uniform Rule 4-5(B) requires all pages of the application, including the application itself and all attachments, to be consecutively numbered. And if you don’t know how long the application itself will be until you write it, you don’t know until the end of the process the number of the first page of the attachments. But this problem is easy to solve. Once the application is in almost-final form, you know how long it will be. If it’s 25 pages, you know that the number of the first page of attachments will be 26. So when I’m finalizing, say, a 25-page application, I just add 25 to all my “An” citations to the attachments and remove the “A”. A1 becomes 26, A2 becomes 27, etc. Is this time-consuming? A bit. But not nearly as time-consuming as trying to fill in totally blank citations to the attachments.

Which leads to another tip: when, in writing a writ application, you cite one of the attachments, cite it by its consecutive-page number. If it’s a multi-volume writ application, cite by volume and page number. Example: “See writ app. vol. 2 p. 301.” Your job as the writer is to make it as easy as possible for the reader to locate what you’re citing. So give the reader the information needed to instantly locate whatever it is you’re citing.

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Some Of The Common Mistakes Made In Appeals.

04 Friday Jul 2014

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in Appellate Law, Appellate Writing, Brief Writing, Legal Analysis, Legal Argument, Legal Writing

≈ Comments Off on Some Of The Common Mistakes Made In Appeals.

Tags

Appellate Briefs, Appellate Law, Appellate Procedure, Brief Writing, Findlaw.com, Legal Argument, Scott P. Stolley, Thompson & Knight LLP

Appeal in Error: Common Mistakes Made in Appeals, by Scott P. Stolley of Thompson & Knight LLP, Findlaw.com

http://tinyurl.com/knotqwo

Some lawyers prefer trial litigation. Some prefer appellate law. For those who enjoy litigation, need to appeal, but don’t want to do it themselves, hire an appellate lawyer. There are appellate specialists out there who know the in’s and out’s of appellate procedure.

Lawyers who specialize in appellate law often have experience working for the justices or former justices of that court. It gives them an unique insight into the personalities and proclivities of that court. Sometimes that is a useful thing. – CCE

After a trial, the losing party often has too much at stake, emotionally or financially, to let the verdict stand unchallenged. Appeal is the next option, but many litigants do not fully understand how different an appeal is from a trial. They may also underestimate the differences between trial lawyers and appellate lawyers. These differences may be overlooked when inexperienced litigants launch an appeal. The following is a discussion of common mistakes that such litigants regularly make. . . .

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Appellate Procedure Resource Guide for State Courts.

16 Sunday Feb 2014

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in Appellate Judges, Appellate Law, Court Rules, Courts, Intermediate Appellate Courts, Judges, Pro Se Guides, State Appellate Courts, Unpublished Opinions

≈ Comments Off on Appellate Procedure Resource Guide for State Courts.

Tags

Appellate ADR, Appellate Case Management, Appellate Judges, Appellate Procedure, Appellate Procedure Resource Guide, Filing Fees, Intermediate Appellate Courts, National Center of State Courts, Pro Se Appeal Guides, Statistics and Trends, Unpublished Opinions

Appellate Procedure Resource Guide, National Center of State Courts

http://www.ncsc.org/Topics/Appellate/Appellate-Procedure/Resource-Guide.aspx

There is a plethora of information here. It is diverse and abundant. Once you arrive at the website, please take your time and browse each section. Please do not overlook the button to the far right for “Companion Sights.” -CCE

The most common structure for a state appellate court system involves one court of last resort with largely discretionary review, commonly called a supreme court, and one intermediate appellate court with largely mandatory review.  Because of this jurisdiction, the intermediate appellate court is the court of final review for the vast majority of state court appeals. Ten states are without an intermediate appellate court. Various combinations based on mandatory versus discretionary jurisdiction, size of the courts, use of panels, geographical divisions, and division between criminal and civil jurisdiction by court exist in the state appellate systems.

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Heads’ Up! A Summary of the New Oklahoma Supreme Court Rule.

19 Thursday Dec 2013

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in Appellate Law, Case Law, Citations, Court Rules, Legal Writing, Oklahoma Civil Appellate Procedure, Oklahoma Supreme Court, Research

≈ Comments Off on Heads’ Up! A Summary of the New Oklahoma Supreme Court Rule.

Tags

Appellate Procedure, Citations, Oklahoma Court of Civil Appeals, Oklahoma Supreme Court, Oklahoma Supreme Court Network, OSCN

IN RE OFFICIAL PUBLICATION OF DECISIONS, SCAD-2013-63, 2013 OK 109, Decided 12/16/2013

http://www.oscn.net/applications/oscn/deliverdocument.asp?citeid=472452

There is a new official publisher of court opinions in town, and it’s not West Publishing.

On January 1, 2014, Rule 1.200 in Title 12 goes into effect. All Oklahoma practitioners should take note of this new rule affecting appellate procedure and citation format.

The Oklahoma Supreme Court becomes the “official” publisher of the Oklahoma Supreme Court and the Oklahoma Court of Civil Appeals. Whenever either the Supreme Court or the Court of Civil Appeals files an opinion with the Court Clerk, the opinion is published that same day on the home page of OSCN, the Oklahoma Supreme Court Network (http://www.oscn.net).

West Publishing Company, which had been the “official” publisher since January 2, 1954, will remain an “unofficial publisher,” along with the Oklahoma Bar Journal and other publications. Regardless, a parallel citation to the Pacific Reporter, a West publication, is still required by this rule.

If you practice in Oklahoma, you may recall when the Supreme Court started using its public domain citation form in 1997. This is now the required citation format – with some new tweaks.  Among the new requirements are citations to the opinion’s paragraph for spot citations.

The Court also addresses how it will publish Memorandum Opinions and Unpublished Opinions. For the first time, a party or individual who believes an unpublished opinion of the Supreme Court or Court of Appeals has “substantial precedential value” may ask the Court to publish that opinion. Opinions designated for publication only in the Oklahoma Bar Journal (“For Publication in O.B.J”) may not be cited as precedent.

The Rule provides examples of the new variations of the required changes in citation format. The examples are logical, and easy to understand. If you wish to make a positive impression with either Court, I would follow these changes precisely. -CCE

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Appellate Practice Primer for the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals

22 Tuesday Oct 2013

Posted by Celia C. Elwell, RP in 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, Brief Writing, Legal Writing

≈ Comments Off on Appellate Practice Primer for the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals

Tags

10th Circuit Court of Appeals, Appellate Procedure, Brief Writing, Legal Writing

Federal Appellate Practice Primer, by Sarah Lee Gossett Parrish, Oklahoma Bar Journal
http://bit.ly/1eHy7TD

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