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Last week saw another COVID-19 related appeal from a temporary restraining order. The Eleventh Circuit addressed the order-designation requirement for notices of appeal with mixed results. The Ninth Circuit held that it could not review a refusal to expedite criminal proceedings after a defendant allegedly violated the terms of his supervised release.…

The Supreme Court held in Ortiz v. Jordan that parties cannot appeal evidence-sufficiency issues raised in a denied summary-judgment motion after a trial on the merits. Parties must instead raise issues with the sufficiency of the trial evidence via a motion under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 50. But Ortiz left open the possibility that a denied summary-judgment motion could preserve purely legal issues for appeal.…

Standards of review are a key part of appellate litigation—you cannot know whether the district court erred without knowing how the court of appeals will look at the district court’s decision. And a variety of standards of review exist, from de novo review for legal issues to clear-error review for factual issues to abuse-of-discretion review for a variety of district court decisions.…

Last week, the D.C. Circuit split over when a dismissal without prejudice became final. That court also addressed its jurisdiction to immediately review the denial of a Glomar response in a Freedom of Information Act case. The Tenth Circuit split on the finality of an exemption order in bankruptcy when the amount of the exemption had yet to be determined.…

Many discussions of federal appellate jurisdiction focus on when litigants can appeal before the end of district court proceedings. But traditional end-of-proceedings appeals have their own issues, including uncertainty over when the time to file them begins to run. That uncertainty can lead to parties’ losing their right to appeal. So efforts to reform appellate jurisdiction cannot look only at interlocutory appeals.…

What a week. Another court weighed in on Guerrero-Lasprilla’s effect on appeals from the denial of cancellation-of-removal. Several courts had to deal with potentially deficient notices of appeal. The Eleventh Circuit applied its new (and improved) law on the finality trap. The Third Circuit held that it lacked jurisdiction when the district court had not resolved the defendants’ cross-claims, even though those cross-claims were effectively moot.…

Immigration law generally strips the courts of appeals of jurisdiction to review a variety of decisions made in immigration proceedings. A savings clause adds that they retain jurisdiction to review legal and constitutional issues. Until recently, most (if not all) courts of appeals broadly read the jurisdiction-stripping provisions to bar appellate review in a variety of contexts.…

Most appeals begin with the filing of a notice of appeal. Those notices have both content and timing requirements. Under Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 3(c), a notice must specify three things: the appealing parties, the appealed order or judgment, and the court to which the party is appealing.…

Last week, the D.C. Circuit addressed finality and appealability in the military-commission context. The Fourth Circuit reminded everyone that Rule 54(b) partial judgments need to include that rule’s magic words (and an explanation). Plus appeals involving anti-SLAPP denials and challenges to the factual basis of qualified-immunity denials. Let’s start with a new cert petition on state-action antitrust immunity.…

Last week saw oral argument in the Supreme Court’s big appellate-jurisdiction case for this term. In other Supreme Court news, the parties finished cert-stage briefing in a case that could get rid of the Fifth Circuit’s finality trap. In the courts of appeals, the Fifth Circuit split on the permissible scope of a certified appeal under § 1292(b).…