Maine Appeals
Maine Appeals

About

In this blog, we seek to discuss issues relating to appeals and appellate law in Maine, including the activities and decisions of the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, the First Circuit Court of Appeals relevant to Maine, and other participants in the Maine appellate community.

December 04, 2017

The RCV decision: a rebuttal to a Maine Bar Journal article
Uncategorized
Authors:
Practice area:

This quarter’s Maine Bar Journal has an article by an attorney, Jeff Goldman, of counsel at Morgan, Lewis in Boston.  It’s called The Law Court’s Troubling Opinion of the Justices, and criticizes the Maine Supreme Judicial Court’s unanimous advisory opinion on the Ranked Choice Voting (“RCV”) statute.  Contrary to the title and vocabulary of the […]

Continue Reading

November 28, 2017

What exactly do you want us to say?
Uncategorized
Authors:
Practice area:

I don’t comment on the substance of matters pending before the Law Court that involve me, but we were involved in an oral argument recently that reminded us of a useful tool in preparing for briefing and argument that is generally applicable, whatever the substantive issue in the appeal might be. The argument that reminded […]

Continue Reading

November 21, 2017

Link rot no more
Uncategorized
Authors:
Practice area:

A few entries ago, summarizing the First Circuit Judicial Conference, we noted how a Harvard librarian explained how attempts were being made to address “link rot” – when opinions cite to a website, and later, that cite disappears (and if not gone, you don’t know if the site has been changed since the opinion was […]

Continue Reading

November 14, 2017

It’s Hamer time
Uncategorized
Authors:
Practice area:

The Supreme Court issued a decision last week made for appellate wonks, in which the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers (where I am a board member) not only filed an amicus brief supporting the position where the unanimous Court landed (AAAL Brief), but got a shout out in a footnote – Hamer v. Neighborhood Housing […]

Continue Reading

November 08, 2017

Calling all appellate wonks – notices of appeal and electronic filing in state court
Uncategorized
Authors:
Practice area:

A reader has alerted me to a dandy notice of appeal issue now pending before the Law Court involving the apparent clash of two civil rules – catnip to appellate jockeys! The case is Perry v. Dean, Docket No. BCD-17-412.  Attached is a copy of an order reinstating the appeal that presents the issue.  (Order […]

Continue Reading

November 01, 2017

No sham, agreed; but as to why …..
Uncategorized
Authors:
Practice area:

One area of law I find of interest, given its First Amendment grounding, is the Noerr-Pennington doctrine – the protection of the right to petition from antitrust liability.  There’s a new First Circuit decision discussing the sham exception to that doctrine, under which an antitrust suit is allowed to go forward based on the defendant’s […]

Continue Reading

October 23, 2017

The First Circuit Judicial Conference
Uncategorized
Authors:
Practice area:

I am now back from the First Circuit Judicial Conference, held every other year, and this time in Maine.  The juxtaposition of the content of this conference with the AAAL conference I blogged on last time presents an interesting perspective. First, here is a very quick rundown of the events: Chief Judge Howard noted that […]

Continue Reading

October 18, 2017

Back from the Future
Uncategorized
Authors:
Practice area:

I have returned from The American Academy of Appellate Lawyers’ conference on the future of appellate practice, leaving San Francisco just before the fires put an orange glow in the sky. While I was there, the weather was terrific and clear, with the Blue Angels flying overhead in a spectacular display. As reported by the […]

Continue Reading

September 27, 2017

The future is in San Francisco
Uncategorized
Authors:
Practice area:

Next week I am off to the biannual meeting of the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers in San Francisco, and the program looks great.  A gaggle of in-house counsel will be discussing the future of legal practice, taking a snapshot of 2027.  Then law school representatives will speak about what they are doing to meet […]

Continue Reading

September 20, 2017

2017 statistics
Uncategorized
Authors:
Practice area:

We last reported on the Maine court statistics in this blog entry – http://www.maineappeals.com/still-here/ – covering 2012-16.  The 2013-2017 period has now been posted (the FY ends June 30).  The 2017 numbers reflect a continuation of the trend we commented upon in our discussion of the 2012-16 period:  the total number of appeals are declining, […]

Continue Reading

To top