Court of Appeals Jurisdiction
To be reviewable by the Court of Appeals, a paper needs to have a certain form.
New York State's highest court is the Court of Appeals. But, like many other appellate courts including the US Supreme Court, access to the Court of Appeals isn't guaranteed. This is because, like the federal courts, it's a court of limited jurisdiction. In other words, the law places limits on its ability to hear a case.
Even though some orders create what's called an appeal as of right, where a party can simply go straight to the Court of Appeals without requesting permission, this isn't very common. Usually, review by the Court of Appeals requires a motion. And this in turn requires showing three things—that the order on appeal from the lower court is appealable, reviewable, and final.
An appealable paper has to meet a few different standards. The appeal generally must come from the Appellate Division (except in limited cases where a right of appeal lies directly from a lower court order). Only an "aggrieved" party (that is, a party who is on the losing end of the order, or at least didn't get everything they wanted from the order) may appeal. The order can't be moot, meaning that the controversy is still "live" and hasn't been resolved. And what may be most important, the order cannot involve an issue that was dismissed on a prior failure to prosecute (this is one of the hazards of interlocutory appeals and we'll see it in more detail in a later blog post).
Just as important, the order up for review has to be final, meaning it fully disposes all of the claims within an action. This can be a strangely complicated analysis, but the main point is that it cannot leave any further judicial action to be taken against any party. This is in contrast to a non-final order, which could include orders resulting from dispositive motions and the interlocutory orders we saw before, as well as orders issuing temporary grants of relief, administrative decisions, motions vacating or enforcing a final judgment, and motions for a new trial.
Reviewability has to do with the issues presented to the Court. Among other considerations, it addresses whether the issues are the proper kind to be put the Court of Appeals (the Court can review only questions of law, not of fact, as the last post explained). Reviewability also requires that the issues were preserved in the record and whether they were decided such that the decision can now be reviewed. Counsel for the appealing party must be sure to show the Court that the issue has been preserved, which means showing that the issue was raised in the lower court (which is the only way the lower court could have a chance to rule on it) and the judge’s ruling was documented in the record. Of course, it's critical that the attorney before the lower court actually preserves the issue for further review, just in case the party wants to request Court of Appeals review later on.
Before the Court of Appeals will agree to consider your case, you'll have to prove that the matter ticks all of these boxes.