Opinion ID: 289589
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: lodging the appeals in this court

Text: 11 Appellee first argues that appellant's petition to this court for allowance of an appeal was filed too late. As we have already pointed out, two appeals to this court were taken by Lee. It is uncontroverted that the first appeal was properly filed within the ten-day limit. 7 The decision of the DCCA denying the motion for a transcript was entered on May 21, 1968. Appellant lodged his petition for review with this court on May 29, less than ten days later. 8 Appellee is objecting, however, to the second filing in this case. Three days after the DCCA denied Lee's motion for a transcript, it also dismissed the appeal from the trial court's refusal to reopen the default judgment, and the petition to review this second order was filed one day late in this court. 9 12 The issue raised by the late filing of a second petition in this case has already been before this court. In February 1969 appellee Habib moved to dismiss this appeal because of late filing of a second petition for allowance of an appeal. That motion was denied, without opinion, by a motions panel of this court. We follow the lead of that panel. The two petitions here are inextricably bound together; they involve the same parties and the same controversy. The transcript issue, which was presented to us by the timely petition, was essential to the final determination of the cause. The DCCA subsequently dismissed the appeal on the merits partially because no transcript had been filed. The first appeal had thus presented this court with the transcript issue, an issue essential to the proper determination of the whole cause by the DCCA. The alleged procedural problem presented by appellee stems only from the fact that the court below disposed of the matter in two motions instead of one. Under the circumstances, we see no reason to disturb the conclusion already reached by this court. A one-day-late notice of appeal from a second order in the same cause does not preclude us from reaching the merits of the cause on the basis of the petition already properly before us. 13