The failure to meet the time deadline to file a notice of civil appeal after entry of a final judgment is one of the very few procedural mistakes a Kentucky civil litigator can commit that is uniformly fatal to the client's case. Appellate lawyers know that the running of the 30-day time period within which a notice of appeal must be filed is automatically terminated by the timely filing of certain post-judgment motions and is restarted once the trial court enters an order ruling on such motions.
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Large punitive damages verdicts by nature warrant careful analysis. They frequently implicate constitutional scrutiny under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Therefore, state courts, including Kentucky, have of necessity incorporated the United States Supreme Court’s jurisprudence on the issue of when a punitive damages award is so grossly excessive as to violate a party’s due process rights.
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A recent decision of the Kentucky Supreme Court centered on the issue of correcting clerical errors in judgments. Though the decision did not have reason to address the matter, it called to mind an interesting difference between the Kentucky Rule of Criminal Procedure governing correction of judgments, RCr 10.10, and the corresponding and nearly identical Rule of Civil Procedure, CR 60.01.
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Leading jurist and legal scholar Richard Posner, of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, is known for his writings on law and economics. He can also be a harsh critic of attorneys. In Monica del Carmen Gonzalez-Servin vs. Ford Motor Company, No. 11-1665 (7th Cir. 2011), Judge Posner authored a stinging critique of an attorney who failed to address dispositive precedent in his client’s appeal brief.
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