Orders You Can’t Appeal

Between the Gaps of Trial Courts’ Orders
    12/04/2016   Orders, Orders You Can't Appeal

SCOGGIN v. SCOGGIN is the case that lets a judge change his mind after the oral rendition. Whatever the trial judge said in court matters not: the written order can be completely different. This spurred a debate among lawyers. The Debate “A great rule!” said some lawyers. “If your judge, upon studied reflection, sees that his oral ruling was wrong, he will correct himself. Surely, in the end, you’d rather have the best decision possible. Why should a judge be stuck with a rendition that he realizes was wrong?!” “Because this leads to uncertainty,” objected other lawyers. “In the olden days, if the trial judge was wrong,…

Can’t Appeal Your Own Consent.
    05/21/2016   Appellate Procedure, Citations for Obvious Points, Orders You Can't Appeal

It is a truth acknowledged among all lawyers: the more obvious the point, the harder it is to find a good cite. For a long time, I could not find authority for the obvious proposition: you can’t appeal a consent order. You might ask: “Why would you want a case for thaaaat?! Who’d be simple enough to appeal a consent order?” Oddly, people appeal consent orders with decent regularity. I do not know why that is. Maybe the clients find themselves consenting in court to all sorts of things they later come to regret. Courts are disorienting that way. Whatever the reason, it happens. A lot….

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