Appellate

Published on: April 9, 2024

How to File an Appeal in Maryland State Court ─ Circuit Court of Appeals

You’ve just lost your case in a Maryland trial court and want to appeal – how do you do it? For the purpose of this article, we’ll assume your case is in a Maryland circuit court (different rules may apply if you’re in the district court). We’ll also assume your case allows a direct appeal; most, but not all, cases are of this type. We’ll further assume you want to exercise your right of appeal to Maryland’s intermediate appellate court, called the Appellate Court of Maryland. In very limited cases, there may be a right of direct appeal to the Supreme Court of Maryland. A litigant can also try to skip the intermediate appellate court and go straight to the Supreme Court, but that’s rare. These two situations are beyond the scope of this article.

How to Appeal a Circuit Court Decision in Maryland

With those qualifications out of the way, we can get down to business. Fortunately for lawyers and litigants, filing an appeal is relatively easy. Maryland Rule 8-201 states that, subject to an exception not addressed here, “the only method of securing review by the Appellate Court is by the filing of a notice of appeal within the time prescribed in Rule 8-202.” So, what’s a notice of appeal? It’s a simple document that informs the lower court of a party’s intention to appeal. Rule 8-201 states that “[i]t is sufficient that the notice be substantially in the following form”:

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Published on: February 8, 2016

Spoliation – The oft mispronounced Rule of Evidence that Every Business Person Needs to Know

By William Sinclair

The Court of Special Appeals of Maryland issued an opinion this week that serves as a reminder that a party’s simple failure to preserve evidence can sometimes snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. The case (and link) is Cumberland Insurance Group v. Delmarva Power.
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Published on: May 30, 2015

Won’t Get Fooled Again: Changes to Appellate Font and Spacing Rules

By William Sinclair

We all know the little tricks to stuffing the most content into the allotted number of pages of your appellate brief (currently 50 for the Court of Appeals and 35 for the Court of Special Appeals) – decreasing the line spacing, decreasing the margins, decreasing the kerning, decreasing the height of the text, etc. Well, you’re not fooling anybody: As noted by the Maryland Standing Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure in its 187th Report, “Appellate judges, in Maryland and elsewhere, are regrettably familiar with those tactics and legitimately complain about them.” The Committee has finally had enough, and is urging the Court of Appeals to amend the Maryland Rules to combat the problem.
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Published on: April 22, 2015

Time Is On (Your) Side: A Proposed Change to Maryland Appellate Rule 8-412(c)

By William Sinclair

As the appellant in the Maryland appellate courts, when should you file your brief? Currently, it’s within 40 days after the clerk notifies you that the court has filed the record. Sounds easy enough, except the current Maryland Rules don’t actually require the clerk to send such a notice. In fixing that little problem, however, the Rules Committee is considering working in a smidge more time for practitioners to get their briefs in.
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