Articles Posted in Appellate Practice

Illinoisappellatelawyerblog was born to worry. And opinions like Estate of York feed that congenital behavior.

The First District Illinois Appellate Court woke us to attention with its first words. “The case before us serves as a cautionary tale to litigants to adhere to Illinois Supreme Court Rule appellate filing deadlines, to timely file requests for extensions of time with good cause shown, and to specify all grounds of appeal in the notice of appeal.”

Dread always follows that kind of lead. Here’s what happened.

The Illinois Supreme Court’s single-paragraph opinion in Keating v. City of Chicago, 2014 IL 116054 (11/20/14), is remarkable because the court was unable to render a decision.

The case involved the validity of Chicago’s red-light camera program [registered owner ticketed if the vehicle is photographed violating a red-light signal]. The First District Illinois Appellate Court affirmed dismissal of the case (2013 IL App (1st) 112559-U, a Rule 23 non-precedential opinion) deferring to Chicago’s home-rule authority.

Several people who were ticketed and who paid the fines appealed to the Illinois Supreme Court. Two of the seven supreme court judges recused themselves from the case. (We don’t know why because they don’t tell us.)

Anita and Sushil Sheth got divorced. Sushil was custodian on several of the couple’s two children’s financial accounts. Anita asked the trial court to remove Sushil as custodian. The trial court did so, and also denied Sushil’s reconsideration request.

Sushil appealed. He apparently mailed the notice of appeal within the 30-day jurisdictional requirement. But his “Certificate of Service” was not notarized. The court received Sushil’s notice of appeal after the 30 days passed.

The First District Illinois Appellate Court dismissed Sushil’s appeal. The court ruled that it did not have jurisdiction to consider Sushil’s arguments because Sushil did not submit proper proof — that is, a notarized Proof of Service — that the notice of appeal had been mailed within the 30-day deadline  So even though Sushil’s proof of service included all of the required information, his appeal was dismissed for lack of a notary public’s stamp.

We are nothing if not current.

An article published in 2003 about effective subheadings, available here for the clicking, was referenced at the top of a “legal writing” Google search I just did. Authors Kara Thompson and Zach Brez for the Writing Center at the Georgetown University Law Center, did a fine job in this short piece explaining the importance of the “point heading.” (Except please don’t make subheads all caps; typical sentence style, boldfaced, is better.)

Don’t be lazy about drafting the subheadings. Sometimes they will be the most important part of your brief.

The Appellate Lawyer Representatives’ Ninth Circuit Practice Guide is available for the downloading from the Ninth Circuit’s web site. It’s a how-to for preparing and filing a brief in the federal appellate court out yonder in California. But it’s chock full of good tips no matter what jurisdiction you find yourself in.

You’ll want to look at the Top Technical Flaws In Briefs. Some of these are more than just technical. Don’t make one of these head-shaking mistakes.

Get the whole guide by clicking here.

Nadeem Nizamuddin was expelled from school. He asked for and received a temporary restraining order against Community Education in Excellence, the operator of the private school, staying the expulsion at least until after a preliminary injunction hearing.

Excellence appealed the restraining order. But its appeal was dismissed for failure to comply with Illinois Supreme Court Rule 307(d), which states the requirements for establishing appellate jurisdiction over an appeal of a temporary restraining order.

Here is what the Second District Illinois Appellate Court said Excellence did wrong.

Carolyn Mahoney sued her former husband, Billy J. Cox, and his lawyer, Marc Gummerson, for plotting to kill her. Cox was in jail, so Mahoney served the Illinois Department of Corrections with a subpoena to find out information about the plot. The DOC asked the trial court to quash the subpoena because the documents Mahoney wanted contained the name of a confidential informant. The DOC argued the informant’s safety could be at risk if his identity were disclosed.

Trial court refused quash the subpoena, and instead compelled the DOC to produce the records. The DOC then asked for an immediate appeal of whether the informant’s identity was privileged under an Illinois statute.

The appeal was allowed, and a question about whether the statute made the informant’s identity confidential was certified. The DOC filed its brief, but neither Mahoney, Cox, nor Gummerson responded. So the issue was how the appellate court should treat an appeal that no one opposed.

Peggy Lee Hall claimed she was injured when she slipped on ice in a parking lot owned by Naper Gold Hospitality LLC. She sued Naper, but the company got summary judgment because Hall did not show facts that there had been an unnatural accumulation of ice.

Hall appealed Naper’s summary judgment. But the Second District Illinois Appellate Court dismissed the appeal “because of the flagrant and, frankly, appalling violations of supreme court rules committed by plaintiff’s [Hall] attorney … and his law firm … in the handling of this appeal.”

These were Hall’s violations:

Always thinking about you and devising unique reading and viewing experiences for our audience, Illinois Appellate Lawyer Blog announces a new series:

♪♪♪ Two Tips ♪♪♪

Two Tips, offered by legal writing and strategy experts, will suggest ways you can improve your brief writing. The tips will be in various formats – written, podcast, video, extra sensory perception, Vulcan mind meld.

Ross Guberman is the author of Point Made: How to Write Like the Nation’s Top Advocates. Go here to read illinoisappellatelawyerblog’s review of Ross’s book. We liked it so much, illinoisappellatelawyerblog asked Ross to answer a few questions about appellate brief writing. Here is Part 1 of that Q&A.

Is brief writing important? If the court will do what it wants anyway, then why does it even matter what the lawyer says in the brief or how he or she says it?

I know there’s been some recent research suggesting that some appellate decisions fall on party lines (in employment-discrimination cases, for example, judges appointed by Democrats are more likely to side with employees than Republican judges are). But most cases are neither political nor ideological, and even in the ones that are, judges look to the briefs for guidance.

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