You are the defendant in a civil case, and you lose before a jury. You’re convicted of driving under the influence of alcohol. You brought a lawsuit against a supermarket where you slipped and hurt yourself, and your case was thrown out.
In all of these cases, you may want to consider appealing. But whether or not you ever appeal, you always want to preserve your right to do so.
Which means that thing you (or your attorney) must do is file a document with court where this event occurred a Notice of Appeal.
To be clear, the Notice of Appeal is not filed with the Massachusetts Appeals Court. That is where your appeal is likely to be brought, but the first step is to file the Notice of Appeal with the trial court. The trial court is where your conviction was entered, or a jury verdict entered, or a case thrown out by a judge.
You have 30 days from the operative event to file a notice of appeal. This is an absolutely critical deadline. You need to have an attorney that is mindful of this deadline, even if they won’t be handling your appeal.
Missing the deadline for filing a Notice of Appeal can have grave consequences, including potentially losing all of your appellate rights.
Here are some other critical things your appellate attorney will need to understand and accomplish for you.
