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The Appeals Paperwork Begins

By Pamela Jones et al.

The clerk that handles sending on notices of appeals for the US District Court for the District of Utah has sent SCO a letter, letting it know that the notice of appeal has been filed with the US Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit and providing SCO with instructions, including to download the rules and forms from here. Just read the letter, and you'll immediately understand what appeals are like.

This is just the beginning, of course. SCO has to do a lot more than file a notice of its appeal. Next the SCO lawyers have to tell the Court of Appeals exactly what they think was decided wrongly at the lower court level.

I would guess that was mostly written some time back, beginning in August of 2007, with refinements added after July of 2008. Really, lawyers plan the appeal from day one, as far as strategy goes.

So much paper. So many picayune instructions. So much is at stake, and all of it depending on your lawyer getting every detail just right. To me, reading the instructions is a lot like reading IRS tax booklets, but without the refreshing illustrative examples. It's a legal specialty, actually, doing appeals, because not everyone can stand it.

Full post as published by Groklaw on November 27, 2008 (boomark / email).