How Many Pages Does It Take to Quash an Appeal?

I have been reading appellate decisions since 1980 and writing a blog about them since 2008. For those who are not legal historians, America has a common law system of jurisprudence. The theory behind it is that courts follow precedent of reported cases so there is consistency in the law. In civil law systems such as those that exist in Europe, law is expressed through written forms of regulation. Needless to say, the Federal Register of U.S. regulations (more than 150,000 pages) illustrates that we do like to write mandates. But the beauty of the common law system of reported decisions is that it is expressed through opinions where the law is applied to the facts. We need regulatory law in a fast moving world, but common law seeks to assure that regulation conforms to reality.

Adherents to the common law are having a tough time though. For the past twenty years our appellate courts have come to produce stacks of unpublished non-precedential opinions. In a word, they are said to be non-binding although in 2019 the appellate rules were amended to allow non-precedential cases to be cited a persuasive. In 2024 we are headed for about 300 published and precedential opinions from the Superior Court. Meanwhile, that court disposes of thousands of cases each year.

Recently, a new disturbing phenomenon has emerged. More and more appellants are forsaking pricey lawyers and writing their own appeals. This is a Herculean task by any measure because the rules are quite complicated and much more focused than the rules in trial courts. Most trial lawyers refer out their appellate work because of the complexity of appellate work. But, the internet seems to assure lay people that they can emerge victorious after losing at trial by doing an appeal alone without a lawyer.

And some do it a lot. Last week brought a custody case where the Superior Court noted that mom had already filed three other appeals of prior custody orders. Grate v. Mann 955 EDA 2024. We might have reported on this except these forays by lay people into the appellate world are being quashed (“tossed out”) or affirmed because the appellants don’t follow the rules regulating what goes into an appeal. J-S27029-24m – 106146880287723038.pdf . Note footnote 9.

This month has brought at least three opinions where the appeal wasn’t just denied as undeveloped. These appeals were dismissed because the appellants seem to think that an appeal is similar to an epistle to the principal explaining why detention should be reversed for schoolyard misconduct. Yet, while dismissing the appeal, in each instance the court is devoting energy to explaining why it acted as it did.

Today brings Oliver v. Oliver, a Lehigh County case involving a child support dispute. In a word, the appellant didn’t follow any of the format rules which are standard for setting up a concise statement of how the trial court erred. The three judge panel devotes pages to describing the infractions. Then it lays out the relevant rules of appellate procedure; all of which can be found on the internet. But then the opinion provides a recitation of the issues the appellant would have broached had she followed the rules. Really? Time which might otherwise have been spent producing precedential cases has been allocated to an essay on the failings of a pro se litigant’s appeal. Was this an invitation to “Try better next time.”? One hopes not. We need more appellate guidance, not merely more appellate dispositions.

People should be entitled to file and prosecute their own cases. But courts are not appellate law schools devoted to teaching a craft that lawyers devote three years to learning. This is the equivalent to my driving into the bay of a service station, elevating my car on the lift and asking the tech in the next bay whether something is wrong with my car. The Pep Boys wouldn’t abide that and our appellate courts shouldn’t either. The ruling in Oliver v. Oliver 1014 EDA 2024 could have been delivered in a single paragraph.

PER CURIAM:  The above captioned appeal fails to conform to Pa. R.A.P. 126,  2111, 2115, 2116, 2117, 2119. Appeal quashed.