Appellate Law Attorneys - Helping you Reverse Legal Errors

After spending the last week, or sometimes month, in a jury trial you have got to be pretty crestfallen to hear that they have decided against you. You know that you are in the right and you are not willing to let this be the final word. This will not and cannot be the end of the matter as far as you are concerned and as such you deserve to fight all the way to the Supreme Court if you must. This is a good fighting spirit to have but there are a lot of things to know about appellate law before you make the long arduous road ahead. Even before you decide whether an appeal is right you should discuss these matters with someone who knows the lay of the land in this type of case.

First of all, filing an appeal is not a retrial. There are neither witnesses nor testimony. Whatever judicial body of appellate law that it is brought in front of will decide the outcome not based on merit but through interpretation and application of legislation. They are not looking to prove innocence or guilt based on merit but rather based on whether there was some sort of error on the part of the jury, the court, or even the other attorneys.

There are many types of errors that may fall under this category. For instance important evidence may have been left out. Other evidence may have been miscategorized or admitted into the case erroneously or with prejudice. In other instances the jury may have committed misconduct by talking to the press or perhaps reading or hearing something that skewed their objectivity. Sometimes the evidence of the case did not support the decision. Other times the opposing counsel may have stepped beyond their bounds in presenting or defending their position. Finally, the whole trial may have misapplied a statute.

All of these errors are possible reasons why an appellate law court may find cause to overturn a decision. That being said, trials are conducted by people and people are inherently flawed. There will always be small mistakes and small errors that crop up in any human endeavor. This cannot be avoided and while it is minimized as much as possible, it still happens from time to time. Because of this, the appellate law court will not consider any errors that they deem harmless or insignificant to the outcome of the trial. Instead any mistake must be a miscarriage of justice. It must be the sort of thing that had it not happened the jury might not have come to the same conclusion. Now that is not a specific thing and that is where the gamble on appealing comes in.

The appeal court is the one who decided what and if something qualifies as an egregious mistake or not. It is hard to tell what will be grounds for a reversal and what won't and so it is best to simply call an attorney and have them review the case with you.