Appellate Law

Supreme Court service copies of appellate briefs may now be served by email!

By Kimberly A. Kralowec

Happy New Year! A few interesting amendments to the Rules of Court went into effect on January 1, 2008. For example, Rule of Court 8.212(c)(2) used to require that four paper copies of all briefs filed with the Court of Appeal be served on the Supreme Court. Effective Tuesday, Rule 8.212(c)(2) was amended to provide that the Supreme Court may now be served by email instead:

(c) Service

(1) ....

(2) One electronic copy or four paper copies of each brief must be served on the Supreme Court as provided in either (A) or (B).

(A) One copy of each brief may be served on the Supreme Court electronically by sending the copy to the Supreme Court?s electronic notification address.

(i) The copy must be a single computer file in text-searchable Portable Document Format (PDF), and it must exactly duplicate the appearance of the paper copy, including the order and pagination of all of the brief?s components. By electronically serving the copy, the filer certifies that the copy complies with these requirements and that all reasonable steps have been taken to ensure that the copy does not contain computer code, including viruses, that might be harmful to the court?s electronic filing system and to other users of that system.

(ii) ....

(B) Instead of serving an electronic copy, four paper copies of each brief filed in a civil appeal must may be served on the Supreme Court. ....

The Advisory Committee Comment says that "'Electronic notification address' is defined in rule 2.250. The Supreme Court?s electronic filing address can be found on the California Courts Web site at www.courtinfo.ca.gov/courts/supreme." I went to that site and it doesn't seem to be available yet.

The California Blog of Appeal also has a post on some of the rule changes, and last week, the Daily Journal had a Focus piece by David Ettinger of Horvitz & Levy on the subject: "New Year, New Rules" (subscription). [Cross-posted at The UCL Practitioner.]

Full post as published by The Appellate Practitioner on January 04, 2008 (boomark / email).