The road to an appellate court can be lined with unanticipated obstacles, You can avoid them if you follow the NC Rules of Appellate Procedure and you keep up with changes in the law regarding appeals. Or you might retain a lawyer who is certified as an appellate specialist by the North Carolina State Bar’s Board of Legal Specialization.
Two cases decided last week (one from the Business Court, the other from the NC Court of Appeals) resulted in dismissals of appeals because the Appellant didn’t follow the Rules or didn’t know about a change in the law. The first appellant was proceeding pro se. The second was represented by a lawyer. So a dismissal of an appeal can really happen to anyone, lawyer or not.
The NC Business Court case (Velleros v. Patterson) involved the appealing party not properly filing his Notice of Appeal with the clerk for the county where the case had originated before designation to the Business Court, although that wasn’t the only reason for the dismissal. (Anyone reading this blog is aware that the appeal of a Business Court decision requires the filing of a paper copy of the Notice of Appeal in the County where the case originated, in addition to an electronic filing in the Business Court).
The appealing party, not represented by a lawyer, had also done nothing to prepare the Record on Appeal required by Rule 9 of the NC Rules of Appellate Procedure. (a record on appeal is a compilation of the documents filed in the trial court which are necessary to a consideration of the appeal)
Judge McGuire dismissed the appeal because the Record on Appeal hadn’t been prepared. Wait a second! (Or as my brother-in-law says: Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!) Can a trial court dismiss an appeal because the appealing party has violated a Rule of Appellate Procedure? Isn’t that power limited to the appellate court?
There Is No Appeal Pending Until The Record On Appeal Is Docketed
The appellate rules contemplate that the power to dismiss an appeal is limited to the appellate court after the appeal is filed. Appellate Rule 25(a), says that "after an appeal has been filed in an appellate court, motions to dismiss are made to that court." Even if the Notice of Appeal had been properly filed the case would not have been in the hands of the COA without the Record on Appeal having been filed, An appeal isn’t fully before an appellate court until the appeal has been "docketed." Craver v. Craver, 298 N.C. 231, 258 S.E.2d 357 (1979)(" until a record on appeal is filed and docketed, there is nothing pending before the appellate division.")
So the action of filing a Notice of Appeal isn’t enough to take the case out of the jurisdiction of the trial court and into the grasp of the appellate court.
And what is this "docketing" thing? It relates directly to the Record on Appeal. "Docketing" is dealt with in Appellate Rule 12(b), which says:
Docketing the Appeal. At the time of filing the record on appeal, the appellant shall pay to the clerk the docket fee fixed pursuant to N.C.G.S. § 7A-20(b), and the clerk shall thereupon enter the appeal upon the docket of the appellate court. . . . An appeal is docketed under the title given to the action in the trial division, with the appellant identified as such. The clerk shall forthwith give notice to all parties of the date on which the appeal was docketed in the appellate court.
A Trial Court Has The Jurisdiction To Dismiss An Appeal Before It Has Been Docketed
So "when an appeal has not yet been docketed with the appellate court, the trial court retains jurisdiction over the case" and it can consider a Motion to Dismiss the appeal. Order ¶2 (citing Carter v. Clements Walker PLLC, 2014 NCBC 12 at 7). (I wrote about the Clements decision a few years ago). Judge McGuire dismissed the Velleros case in an unpublished Order. because the Record on Appeal hadn’t been filed.
This Appellant was proceeding without a lawyer. It’s a bad idea to appear in the Business Court without a lawyer, it’s even a worse idea to go pro se in an appellate court.
Make Sure You Appeal To The Right Court
But even a lawyer can make a mistake that can be fatal to an appeal. The Order dismissing the Velleros appeal came on the heels of a decision from the NC Court of Appeals this week dismissing an appeal from a Business Court decision, Christenbury Eye Center P.A. v. Medflow, Inc.
Why? The party appealing (represented by a lawyer) had filed its Notice of Appeal in the wrong Court. It was filed in the NC Court of Appeals, not the NC Supreme Court. Because you read this blog or the NC Appellate Practice Blog (or you pay for a subscription to NC Lawyers Weekly), you’ve known since last year that the NC Legislature amended the General Statutes to provide that appeals of "final judgments" of the Business Court are taken to the NC Supreme Court, and no longer to the NC Court of Appeals. N.C. Gen. Stat. §7A-27-(a)(2).
But the Plaintiff appealing Chief Business Court Judge Gale’s final judgment in Christenbury Eye Center P.A. v. Medflow, Inc., didn’t know about that change in the law. That’s an understandable mistake, as almost all civil appeals in North Carolina must go to the NC Court of Appeals and don’t go directly to the NC Supreme Court.
What is particularly interesting about the Christenbury ruling is that the decision to dismiss the appeal wasn’t even the result of a Motion to Dismiss by the Appellee pointing out the jurisdictional problem. The Court of Appeals apparently raised the issue on its own volition. It said that:
If an appealing party has no right of appeal, an appellate court on its own motion should dismiss the appeal even though the question of appealability has not been raised by the parties themselves.”
Op, at 4 (quoting Hyatt v. Town of Lake Lure, 191 N.C. App. 386, 390, 663 S.E.2d 320, 322 (2008).
But understandable or not, and lack of a Motion to Dismiss or not, there was no mercy from the COA for the Appellant in Christenbury. Judge Davis held that "we lack jurisdiction over Christenbury’s appeal, and as a result, the appeal must be dismissed." Op. at 5.
The change regarding appeals from the Business Court going to the NC Supreme Court instead of the Court of Appeals applies only to cases designated to the Business Court on or after October 1, 2014. The Christenbury case was designated to the Business Court on October 29, 2014, so the change was applicable to it.
Update: The Plaintiff filed an Amended Notice of Appeal, this time appealing to the NC Supreme Court, after the decision by the NC COA dismissing its appeal. Judge Gale dismissed that revised appeal in an Order on June 14, 2016, saying that he had "no discretion to allow Plaintiff to amend its appeal" and that only the appellate courts had that discretion.
(Note: I wouldn’t have been aware of the Christenbury decision if my Brooks Pierce colleague Daniel F.E. Smith hadn’t brought it to my attention. Thanks, Dan).
(Another Note: I have mentioned the NC Appellate Practice Blog at least twice in this post. I am a huge fan of that blog, which does a great job of writing about what can be the "traps" of appealing an NC Business Court case (and does it way better and more thoroughly than this blog). Today, Beth Scherer, a frequent author of that blog, wrote about the interesting appeal from the Business Court of four consolidated cases, one of which was designated to the Business Court before the effective date of the statute requiring appeals from the Business Court to go to the NC Supreme Court (October 1, 20014) and was therefore supposed to be appealed to the NC Court of Appeals, while the other three cases were designated after October 1, 2014 and were to be appealed to the NC Supreme Court. Beth flagged that issue several months ago and today wrote about how the NC Supreme Court resolved whether it should consider the appeal of just three of the cases or consider all four.)