It is not necessary that having evidences in your favor will always ensure victory. This is because certain things depend on how your lawyer presents the case. It also depends on the experience of the attorney and how he is highlighting the evidences.
In case of a defeat due to this cause, there may be two outcomes. First, you accept defeat and don’t pursue any further and secondly, you appeal to a higher court for review of the current decision.
So, appeal from legal perspective is a process of requesting to review an official decision. Appellate court is a court which hears appeal cases from other courts. There can be several circumstances based on which appeals can be made. These include:
• If the appealing party is not convinced that the procedure taken to give the judgment is sufficient
• If the appealing party believes that some or many of the important points vital to the case have been overlooked for one reason or the other
The party who files an appeal is called an appellant and the party who is on the other side is called respondent. In Florida, the appellate attorney procedure is defined by the appellate rules of 1978 and the amendment to appellate rules later.
Jurisdiction of the Supreme Court and district court is separated so that overlapping in jurisdiction doesn’t result in complexities. Florida Supreme Court has the following jurisdiction in relation to the reviewing of appeals:
• Death sentences passed by lower courts
• Lower courts decision to declare a statute invalid
• Action of agencies providing services like- electricity, telephone, gas, etc throughout the state.
There are several other types of areas where appeal cases are sent to the Supreme Court for review. The jurisdiction of lower courts can be summarized as under:
• Final orders of trial courts are not directly reviewable by Supreme Court
• Non-final lower court orders which doesn’t fall under rule 9.130
Several other areas where lower courts have the jurisdiction to give judgment also exist.
In case of criminal cases one has to file for appeal within thirty days from the day of decision passed by the current court.
If you see the USA appeal system in general, one will find two appeal types- trail de novo or an on record appeal. It has been that in cases where judges have given judgment rather than a jury, an abuse of discretion review standard is applied. There are rare cases when appellants are able to convince that current evidences were not discovered during earlier trial process.
In any case, it is important that a Florida Resident should immediately consult a Florida Appellate Attorney. This is because there will be lots of discussions and evaluations of the prior judgment. This has to be done before filing fresh lawsuit.