Opinion ID: 1262081
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Conner's Appeal Against Rowe and Langley

Text: Petitioners Rowe and Langley argue that the appeal against them should be dismissed because Conner failed to timely serve them a Notice of Appeal. We agree. When Conner appealed the trial court's decision, she filed a Notice of Appeal which named only City of Forest Acres as respondent. The Notice is dated January 12, 1998. In a letter dated January 14, 1998, the Court of Appeals advised Conner's attorney that the caption should read differently, i.e., that the City, Rowe and Langley should be listed as defendants, and the City separately named as respondent. After several extensions were granted to Conner for filing her initial brief, the brief and designation of matter were filed in late May 1998. Thereafter, and in response to the Court of Appeals' request, Conner filed a corrected Notice of Appeal and Proof of Service which now named Rowe and Langley as respondents. Rowe and Langley objected. Conner filed a motion to correct the record which Rowe and Langley opposed. The Court of Appeals granted the motion and accepted the backdated Notice of Appeal. Rowe and Langley argue that the Court of Appeals erred in allowing this correction because this was not a typographical error or mere oversight. Instead, they contend Conner initially pursued an appeal against the City only, and this was confirmed by the subsequent correspondence between Conner and the Court of Appeals. Service of the notice of intent to appeal is a jurisdictional requirement, and the Court has no authority to extend or expand the time in which the notice of intent to appeal must be served. Mears v. Mears, 287 S.C. 168, 337 S.E.2d 206 (1985). Clearly, Rowe and Langley were not served with a Notice of Appeal naming them as respondents within the 30-day time period prescribed by Rule 203(b)(1), SCACR. Nonetheless, citing Moody v. Dickinson, 54 S.C. 526, 32 S.E. 563 (1899), Conner argues that clerical errors on a Notice of Appeal will not defeat the appeal. In Moody, the defendant filed a Notice of Appeal naming H.J. Moody as plaintiff. However, defendant's counsel, having soon afterwards discovered the mistake in the title of his notice of appeal, gave notice to plaintiffs' counsel that he would move ... to amend the notice of appeal by ... adding the names of the other plaintiffs. Id. at 531, 32 S.E. at 565 (emphasis added). This motion was granted, and plaintiffs appealed. The Court held that there was no error in allowing the defendant to correct a mere clerical error in the title of his notice of intention to appeal, whereby it is not even claimed that plaintiffs were misled or in any way prejudiced..... Id. at 534, 32 S.E. at 566 (emphasis added). We find the instant case is factually distinguishable from Moody. Here, the facts indicate that the Notice of Appeal did not contain a mere clerical error. First, Conner did not soon after filing the Notice discover any mistake. Second, the Court of Appeals' first correspondence with Conner advising her of the way the caption should read (i.e., with only the City named as respondent and Rowe and Langley named as defendants) should have alerted Conner to this mistake. It was not until the Court of Appeals invited Conner to correct the Notice that Conner took any action. Indeed, the rule of Moody compels us under these facts to find Rowe and Langley were misled into believing they were not part of this appeal by the almost five-month delay in amending the Notice, and therefore, they clearly were prejudiced by the amendment. Accordingly, we hold that the Court of Appeals erred in granting Conner's motion to correct the record and accepting the backdated Notice of Appeal. See Mears, supra . Petitioners Rowe and Langley are dismissed from this action.