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In Vergara v. City of Chicago, the Seventh Circuit untangled a procedural mess involving multiple missed deadlines. The notice of appeal was late (though understandably so), as was the objection to the late notice. But none of these missed deadlines went to the court’s jurisdiction. They were claims-processing rules—one mandatory but not properly invoked, the other not mandatory and forfeited.…

There weren’t too many federal appellate-jurisdiction decisions last week. But the few we got were interesting. The Second Circuit had to untangle the interplay between state sovereign immunity appeals and redistricting challenges. The First Circuit applied its approach to appeals from denials of relief from bankruptcy’s automatic stay (an issue currently before the Supreme Court).…

This week’s roundup was slightly delayed. Last week saw several unique and interesting decisions on appellate jurisdiction. The Seventh Circuit said that the civil-appeal deadline applied to a criminal forfeiture order. The Third Circuit allowed the appeal of a gag order that prohibited a defendant from contacting the plaintiff’s shareholders. And the Eleventh Circuit navigated the rules on post-judgment discovery appeals in the context of an order enforcing arbitral summonses.…

Last week saw an interesting Third Circuit decision on appealing dismissals without prejudice. The Fifth Circuit gave a helpful explanation of when attorneys can appeal language in an opinion that criticizes them. The Second Circuit addressed its jurisdiction to review denials of Criminal Rule 35(b) sentence-reduction motions. And the government opposed cert in Nasrallah v.…

In Sprint Nextel Corp. v. Wireless Buybacks Holdings, LLC, the Fourth Circuit addressed one of Sprint’s suits against cell-phone arbitrageurs. But before reaching the merits, the court had to assure itself of its jurisdiction. After the district court had granted partial summary judgment to Sprint on liability, the parties stipulated to the amount of damages and the defendant appealed.…

Last week saw further developments in the emoluments appeals, a helpful discourse on appealing stipulated judgments, a proper approach to governmental-privilege appeals, and even an application of the administrative-remand rule.…

Last week saw some interesting filings and a handful of notable cases. Let’s start with two en banc petitions in cases that I’ve previously covered on this site.…

There were a few interesting decisions last week on appeals from the denial of governmental privileges, calculating the time for the government to appeal in a criminal case, appeals from the denial state-action immunity, and an attempt to use some of the recent research on qualified immunity to change the law governing qualified-immunity appeals.…

In last week’s Stallworth v. Bryant, the Fifth Circuit allowed Mississippi legislators to appeal a discovery order that rejected their claim of legislative privilege. It appears that those legislators were never held in contempt. This is odd; litigants normally must first be held in contempt for disobeying a discovery order before they can appeal it.…

Updated August 22, 2019 with two additional thoughts.

The Rules Committee has published proposed amendments to Federal Rule of Appellate Procedure 3(c) for public comment. The amendments are good—they correct misreadings of Rule 3 that had senselessly deprived litigants of their appellate rights. But because the amendments correct a misreading of the rule as it’s currently written, they add complexity to Rule 3 that might prove confusing to those who were unaware of the problem.…