Title: Nasir v. State

State: delaware

Issuer: Delaware Supreme Court

Document:

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF DELAWARE 
 
MALIK NASIR, 
 
Petitioner Below, 
Appellant, 
 
v. 
 
STATE OF DELAWARE, 
 
Appellee. 
§ 
§   
§  No. 477, 2023 
§ 
§  Court Below: Superior Court 
§  of the State of Delaware 
§   
§  C.A. No. K16M-03-005 
§   
§ 
 
Submitted: January 12, 2024 
Decided: 
February 9, 2024 
 
Before SEITZ, Chief Justice; LEGROW and GRIFFITHS, Justices. 
 
 
ORDER 
 
 
After consideration of the notice to show cause and the responses, it appears 
to the Court that: 
(1) 
The appellant, Malik Nasir, filed this appeal from an order of a Superior 
Court commissioner that denied1 his petition for return of property under 16 Del. C. 
§ 4784.  The Senior Court Clerk issued a notice to Nasir to show cause why the 
appeal should not be dismissed for this Court’s lack of jurisdiction to consider an 
appeal taken directly from a Superior Court commissioner’s order. 
 
1 The Commissioner’s decision is styled as a “Commissioner’s Order” and states that the petition 
is denied and that the property at issue “will be forfeited to the State.”  We note that under the 
Superior Court rules of civil procedure, Superior Court Commissioners may “conduct case-
dispositive hearings” and “submit to a judge of [the Superior Court] proposed findings of fact and 
recommendations for the disposition, by a judge, of any such case-dispositive matter.”  DEL. 
SUPER. CT. R. CIV. PROC. 132(a)(4).   
 
2 
(2) 
In response to the notice to show cause, Nasir states that after he 
received the commissioner’s order he went to the Superior Court to file “a post 
judgment motion to object to the Commissioner’s order,” but a judicial case manager 
told him that “an appeal of the Commissioner’s order was not to be filed in the 
Superior Court, but to be filed in the Delaware Supreme Court.”  He asserts that he 
received similar information from staff in the office of the Clerk of this Court.  After 
receiving this Court’s notice to show cause, he filed in the Superior Court a motion 
for an extension of time to file objections to the commissioner’s order.   
(3) 
At the Court’s request, the State answered Nasir’s response, stating that 
the judicial case manager that Nasir identified indicated that she did speak with 
Nasir, but that she told him that she could not give legal advice.  The State asserts 
that the appeal should be dismissed because “the right to review of a commissioner’s 
order is to a judge of the Superior Court.”2  But the State contends that Nasir is not 
without a remedy, because he may pursue his motion for an extension to file 
objections to the commissioner’s order. 
(4) 
It is well settled that this Court does not have jurisdiction to hear an 
appeal taken directly from an order issued by a Superior Court commissioner and 
that the right to review of a Superior Court commissioner’s order is to a judge of the 
 
2 Desousa v. State, 2022 WL 1021618 (Del. Apr. 5, 2022). 
 
3 
Superior Court.3  Accordingly, this appeal must be dismissed.  We leave to the 
Superior Court to decide in the first instance whether to grant Nasir’s motion for an 
extension of time to file exceptions to the commissioner’s order.4 
NOW, THEREFORE, IT IS ORDERED, under Supreme Court Rule 29(b), 
that the appeal is DISMISSED.  
 
 
 
 
 
BY THE COURT: 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
/s/ N. Christopher Griffiths 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Justice  
 
 
3 Browne v. State Farm Inc., 2022 WL 5073767, at *1 (Del. Oct. 4, 2022) (citing Johnson v. State, 
884 A.2d 475, 478 (Del. 2005), and DEL. SUPER. CT. R. CIV. PROC. 132(a)(4)); Lions Share Trust 
v. United Servs. Auto. Ass’n, 2023 WL 6842479, at *1 (Del. Oct. 16, 2023) (citing Browne). 
4 DEL. SUPER. CT. R. CIV. PROC. 132(c).  Cf. Lions Share Trust, 2023 WL 6842479, at *1 (“As the 
appellants did not serve and file written objections to the Commissioner’s order within ten days as 
permitted under Superior Court Civil Rule 132(a)(4)(ii), it appears that the case may be closed if 
the Superior Court judge accepts the Commissioner’s order.” (citations omitted)); Browne, 2022 
WL 5073767, at *1 (“[T]he appellant should be given the opportunity to file written objections to 
the commissioner’s order.”).