In The Recorder's 'On Appeals' column this month, Ben Feuer offers:
Meritless Ninth Circuit Civil Appeal Getting You Down? Get It Decided—Summarily
Even meritless appeals that require little opinion-writing time can take a year or more to be processed by the court. The delay is made worse by the court’s seven judicial vacancies, with at least one more announced—nearly a quarter of the circuit’s allotment.
Most of the time, there’s nothing a civil litigant can do but grit teeth and see the process through to its end. But if you’re up against a clearly frivolous appeal, or the Supreme Court has just issued a decision that unquestionably conflicts with the trial court’s ruling, you may be able to hurry things along with a little-known and rarely employed technique: a motion for summary disposition.
The Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure don’t mention summary disposition motions. In the Ninth Circuit, they arise pursuant to Circuit Rule 3-6, which allows a party in a civil appeal to bring a motion to immediately resolve an appeal where “clear error or an intervening court decision or recent legislation requires reversal” or remand, or “it is manifest that the questions on which the decision in the appeal depends are so insubstantial as not to justify further proceedings.”
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