Opinion ID: 2773043
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: filing a petition for interlocutory appeal

Text: WITH THE SUPREME COURT DOES NOT SATISFY RULES 3 AND 4 ¶14 Rules 3 and 4 of the Utah Rules of Civil Procedure make clear that an appeal from a final order may not be heard unless the appellant filed a notice of appeal with the district court within thirty days of the order’s entry. The “[f]ailure of an appellant to take any step other than the timely filing of a notice of appeal does not affect the validity of the appeal,” UTAH R. APP. P. 3(a), but the failure of an appellant to file a notice of appeal prevents the appellate court from taking jurisdiction of the case. Prowswood, Inc. v. Mountain Fuel Supply Co., 676 P.2d 952, 955 (Utah 1984) (“It is axiomatic in this jurisdiction that failure to timely perfect an appeal is a jurisdictional failure requiring dismissal of the appeal.”), superseded in part on other grounds by procedural rule, UTAH R. APP. P. 3, as recognized in Clark v. Archer, 2010 UT 57, ¶ 14, 242 P.3d 758. ¶15 In applying this rule, we note that the caption on a court filing is not dispositive. “When determining whether a notice of appeal is sufficient, we look to the substance of the notice—not its caption.” Cedar Surgery Ctr., L.L.C. v. Bonelli, 2004 UT 58, ¶ 12, 96 P.3d 911. If an appellant files an incorrectly captioned document that 3 MC GIBBON v. FARMERS INSURANCE Opinion of the Court “otherwise complie[s] with the content and service requirements of rule 3,” and does so within the deadlines set by rule 4, the “misdesignation of the appeal . . . [is] harmless.” Id. Under such circumstances, the appellate court may take jurisdiction of the case. ¶16 But in this case, Ms. McGibbon did not file a notice of appeal with the district court, correctly captioned or otherwise. The appellant in Cedar Surgery satisfied the requirements of rules 3 and 4 by filing a copy of its petition for permission to appeal in the district court as well as in the appellate court. Id. ¶¶ 5, 11. But Ms. McGibbon did not file a copy of her petition in the district court; indeed, she filed nothing at all in the district court between the entry of the court’s final order and the thirty-day deadline. ¶17 The only notice the district court received of Ms. McGibbon’s appeal was a routine form letter sent by the supreme court to the district court after she filed her petition. Although the language of rule 3 is not entirely clear as to whether a document that is in the record but not filed by the appellant can constitute a notice of appeal, we think the better reading of the text is that it cannot—that the notice of appeal must be a document filed by the appellant and not merely a letter sent by the appellate court. In any case, the supreme court’s letter in this proceeding could not serve as a notice of appeal because it does not contain all the information required by rule 3. Specifically, it does not “specify the party or parties taking the appeal,” and it does not “designate the judgment or order . . . appealed from.” UTAH R. APP. P. 3(d). ¶18 We therefore conclude that Ms. McGibbon has not filed a notice of appeal and that we lack jurisdiction to consider her case. Had she filed a copy of her interlocutory petition in the district court, we could have treated it as a notice of appeal if it satisfied the requirements of rules 3 and 4. See Cedar Surgery, 2004 UT 58, ¶ 11. But because she failed to file anything in the district court that satisfied those requirements, her case is disposed of by our holding in Clark v. Archer: the failure to file a notice of appeal in the district court “cannot be corrected by the erroneous filing of a petition for interlocutory appeal” in the appellate court. 2010 UT 57, ¶ 13, 242 P.3d 758.