Articles Tagged with how to file an appeal

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”: