Arizona Attorney - December 2013

must understand: ( 1) the procedures and underlying principles of appellate jurisdiction; and ( 2) the problems that premature notices of appeal cause, such as needless waste of time, increased expense, delayed resolution, further burdening an already overburdened court—and disdain from Arizona’s appellate courts.

This article also describes new rules, effective January 1, 2014, that aim to help cure jurisdictional defects arising from premature notices of appeal.

Shifting Jurisdiction:
From Trial Court to Court
of Appeals

A “Notice of Appeal” (NOA) transfers jurisdiction of a case from the trial court to the Arizona Court of Appeals. An NOA must state the name of the trial court and action, specify the judgment or order being appealed, name the appellant or appellants, name the court to which the appeal is taken, and be signed by the party appealing or its attorney. 3 The NOA must be filed with the Clerk of the Superior Court, not the Court of Appeals. 4 Appellants are not required to specify which appellees the appeal is being taken against, but when only some appellees are listed, the appellate court does not have jurisdiction over unlisted appellees. 5

Where an opposing party has adequate
notice of an appeal, and is not otherwise
prejudiced, technical errors in the lan-
guage of the NOA do not ordinarily pre-
vent appellate courts from reaching the
merits of the appeal. 6 For example, an
NOA that named parents as appellants,
but failed to name the injured child on
whose behalf the parents brought the
action, nonetheless sufficiently perfected
the child’s appeal as well. 7 Similarly, an
NOA that referred only to a judgment in
favor of county defendants, and not to
the judgment regarding the city defen-
dants, sufficiently preserved appellant’s
appeal against both of these government
appellees because both received the
NOA and participated in post-judgment
proceedings pertaining directly to the
appeal. 8 Though an NOA should specify
the judgment or part thereof appealed
from, it need not designate intermediate
orders involving the merits of the action
and necessarily affecting the judgment. 9

When to File
the NOA

Appellate court jurisdiction is limited to those circumstances listed in A.R.S. § 12- 2101. The general rule is that the Arizona Court of Appeals lacks jurisdiction until there is a final judgment that disposes of all claims and parties. 10 The underlying rationale of the final judgment rule is to prevent disruptions of the trial process that leave the trial court uncertain about its jurisdiction to decide a pending motion. This rule also prevents the piecemeal appeals that could result if appellate courts decided cases while unresolved motions remained below. 11

A final judgment resolves all issues in the pleadings and “fix[es] the parties’ rights and liabilities as to the controversy between them.” 12 All judgments in civil cases must be in writing, and a judge or authorized court commissioner must sign them. 13 The judgment is not usually final until it is filed with the trial court clerk. 14 A minute entry is only a final judgment if it enters judgment or dismisses the action, is signed by a judge, and is filed with the clerk. 15 The trial court ordinarily should not, in accordance with Rule 58(g), enter a final judgment until claims for attorneys’ fees are resolved.

An NOA should be filed no later than 30 days after the entry of a final judgment. 16 An untimely NOA, before the new rules go into effect, does not give the appellate court jurisdiction and, under those circumstances, the appellate court is required to dismiss the attempted appeal. 17