Sometimes you fall headlong into a chorus you thought you knew by heart—only to discover the bridge is where all the action is. For appellate practitioners, that action seems to
Continue Reading Complicated: Premature Oral Notices of Appeal & Writs of Certiorari
It’s the stuff of nightmares: you drop your notice of appeal in the mail 24 days after a summary-judgment order is entered against your client, trusting the post office will
Continue Reading Court of Appeals Saves Appellant From Post Office Predicament
Morgan’s prior blog post on State v. McLean started the wheels turning on a topic I find fascinating: oral notices of appeal.
Civil lawyers love written notices of appeal. Have
Continue Reading The Lights Are Still On: Oral Notices of Appeals in Criminal Cases
Big news out of the Court of Appeals for criminal practitioners. In State v. McLean, the Court of Appeals addressed a notice of appeal that was given orally the
Continue Reading At Trial: Court of Appeals Defines Time Within Which Oral Notice of Appeal May Be Given in Criminal Cases
Thirty years ago, Justice Scalia famously described the Supreme Court’s Lemon test as “some ghoul in a late-night horror movie that repeatedly sits up in its grave and shuffles abroad
Continue Reading Just in Time for Halloween: Has the Specter of Viar Returned?
When prospective Appellants face a deadline for filing a Notice of Appeal, it is imperative that they know how many days, and which days, to count.
Continue Reading Whoever Said “Don’t Count the Days, Make the Days Count,” Must Not Have Needed to File a Notice of Appeal
Writer and futurist Alvin Toffler cautioned, “You’ve got to think about big things while you’re doing small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction.” Today’s
Continue Reading Avoiding Big Problems with Small Details: Protecting Sensitive Information and Including the “Littlest Big” Detail With Notices of Appeal
For both civil and criminal appeals, the North Carolina Rules of Appellate Procedure require an appealing party who is filing a written notice of appeal to identify “the judgment or
Continue Reading What Rulings Should You Include in a Notice of Appeal?
This week, the Court of Appeals added some nuance to an issue that has plagued appellants for many years: the calculation of the appeal period when a judgment is not
Continue Reading The Countdown That Ends Before It Even Starts: The Unwritten “Actual Notice” Pathway to Losing Your Right to Appeal
An intriguing by-play between judges on the North Carolina Court of Appeals recently emerged into public view in the case of State v. Calvin Lee Miller.
After shooting his
Continue Reading The Descent of a Dissent