What Are Some Results That Put a Case Into the Appeals Process?

There are 3 ways that a case can go up on appeal. The most common way is after a final judgment. Now a final judgment is a judgment that resolves all issues, claims, and defenses in a case. After a final judgment, there is nothing left to that case. And so we often think about a final judgment coming after a jury verdict and a trial that will be appealable. The losing party at a trial following the entry of the final judgment will want to appeal that case and try to get it reversed and get a, get a second shot at the trial level, perhaps. The other way that a final judgment can occur is through pretrial motion practice that includes perhaps a motion to dismiss, a motion for summary judgment. These are motions that one party files, typically the defendant, will file saying, look, Your Honor or judge, there is no reason for this case to go to trial because there are defects in the facts and evidence or there are legal reasons why this case shouldn’t be allowed to go to trial. If a trial judge grants a motion to dismiss or grants a motion for summary judgment. And again it eliminates all issues, claims and defenses in the case that the losing party will often want to appeal that to the appellate court to try to get it reversed. The second mechanism by which a case may go up on appeal is through an interlocutory appeal. An interlocutory order is one that does not resolve all issues, claims, and defenses in a case. It’s one that only partially resolves some issues, but because of the nature of the order, the rules and the law allow parties to appeal that without waiting first for a final judgment. In Texas, for example, we have a statute that tells you which interlocutory orders can go up on appeal. One example is an order on a temporary injunction. So if a plaintiff files a lawsuit and seeks a temporary injunction, either requiring a defendant to do something or an order preventing a defendant from taking a certain action, and that gets denied or granted, that order may go up on appeal. And the same thing with when a government who’s been sued claims that a case should be dismissed or a part of a case should be dismissed based on their sovereign immunity. If that motion gets denied, for example, the government is going to be able to appeal that interlocutory order. That’s not necessarily the end of the case. But because the trial judge denied their motion for dismissal based on sovereign immunity, the statute, Texas law, allows you to appeal that one immediately. And there are other examples too, such as class certification orders and certain medical malpractice orders that can go up on immediately on appeal in the middle of a case and effectively delay a case for a year or two. The third mechanism for appeal that is certainly more rare is called mandamus. It’s not technically an appeal, but it, it is an appeal in this sense that if there is a mistake by the trial judge that one party feels is so egregious and that cannot be remedied by the normal appellate procedures that aggrieved party may file a petition for mandamus with the appellate court. And this basically tells the appellate court or argues to the appellate court that the trial judge made such a mistake here, such a bad mistake that that we cannot fix on appeal, that you, the appellate court, need to order the trial judge to vacate this order. Now the most common historically, the most common scenario where a mandamus petition gets filed is when a trial judge orders one party to turn over confidential materials. So once you, once one party discloses confidential materials, the toothpaste is out of the tube and that’s not something that can be remedied on appeal. So prior to abiding by that order and turning over confidential materials to the other side, the aggrieved party may seek a mandamus order from the appellate court, effectively reversing that order requiring them to turn over the confidential materials. So those are the three ways that a case may reach an appellate court: an appeal following a final judgment, an interlocutory appeal, and a petition for mandamus.