Court Opinion

ID: 9755342
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 20:35:18.81057+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:06.381435
License: Public Domain

Luckert, J.,
dissenting: I respectfully disagree with the majority opinion. No statute or rule requires an appellant to state the jurisdictional basis for an appeal to the Court of Appeals when filing a notice of appeal. Consequently, I would hold that the State elected and sufficiently announced the jurisdictional basis for the relief it sought by clearly requesting the relief in its initial brief to the Court of Appeals in State v. Berreth, No. 94,310, 2007 WL 806002 (Kan. App. 2007) (unpublished opinion) (Berreth I).

Divergent Lines of Cases

The issue in this appeal has been addressed in several cases, and two divergent lines of cases have developed. In the line of cases adopted by the majority, this court has held that an appellant must cite a statutory basis for jurisdiction in a notice of appeal and is bound by that statement unless there is a formal amendment. E.g., State v. Verge, 272 Kan. 501, 521, 34 P.3d 449 (2001) (“ ‘Grounds for jurisdiction not identified in a notice of appeal may not be *127considered by the court.’ ”); State v. Woodling, 264 Kan. 684, Syl. ¶ 2, 957 P.2d 398 (1998) (same); State v. Kerby, 259 Kan. 104, 106, 910 P.2d 836 (1996) (failure to cite statute giving Supreme Court jurisdictional basis in notice of appeal or to timely amend the notice of appeal deprived court of jurisdiction); State v. G.W.A., 258 Kan. 703, 705-07, 906 P.2d 657 (1995) (“State must also lay a foundation for its own appeal by filing a notice of appeal which gives the appellate court jurisdiction to hear the appeal.”).
Yet, as the majority points out, these decisions are contrary to an earlier line of decisions. See State v. Harpool, 246 Kan. 226, 788 P.2d 281 (1990); State v. Martin, 232 Kan. 778, 658 P.2d 1024 (1983); State v. Grimes, 229 Kan. 143, 622 P.2d 143 (1981); State v. Whorton, 225 Kan. 251, 589 P.2d 610 (1979). The majority dismisses these earlier cases, but I am not willing to do so because I find the analysis in Verge, Woodling, Kerby, and G.W.A. to be faulty, as those decisions do not cite any constitutional or statutory authority for the requirement that a notice of appeal must state the statutory grounds for jurisdiction over the appeal. The lack of cited authority is not surprising because there is no such constitutional or statutory requirement, and this lack of a constitutional or statutory source undermines the requirement created by the holdings of these cases. An examination of the basis for appellate jurisdiction explains this conclusion.
This court’s jurisdiction derives from Article 3, § 3 of the Kansas Constitution, which states that the Kansas Supreme Court will have “such appellate jurisdiction as may be provided by law.” There is not a similar constitutional provision relating to the Kansas Court of Appeals, but K.S.A. 20-3001 provides that “[t]he court of appeals shall have such jurisdiction over appeals in civil and criminal cases and from administrative bodies and officers of the state as may be prescribed by law.” These provisions have been consistently interpreted to mean “ That appellate jurisdiction is defined by statute.’ [Citation omitted.]” State v. Ellmaker, 289 Kan. 1132, 1148, 221 P.3d 1105 (2009), cert. denied 560 U.S. 966 (2010).
Under the relevant statutes, appellate jurisdiction is triggered by the timely filing of a notice of appeal. See Albright v. State, 292 Kan. 193, 197, 251 P.3d 52 (2011). K.S.A. 60-2103(b) defines the *128contents of a notice of appeal in both civil and criminal cases. See K.S.A. 22-3606 (“the statutes and rules governing procedure on appeals to an appellate court in civil cases,” apply to criminal appeals whenever there is not a specific criminal statute or court rule).
K.S.A. 60-2103(b) states in part: “The notice of appeal shall specify the parties taking the appeal; shall designate the judgment or part thereof appealed from, and shall name the appellate court to which the appeal is taken.” There is no requirement that the stat-utoiy grounds for the appeal or the jurisdictional basis be cited.
Without a constitutional or statutory basis for a requirement that a notice of appeal include a citation to the statute giving the court jurisdiction, tire Verge, Woodling, Kerby, and G.W.A. courts imposed this requirement by extrapolating from the requirement in K.S.A. 60-2103(b) that “[t]he notice of appeal . . . shall designate the judgment or part thereof appealed from.” The earliest of these cases, G.W.A., 258 Kan. at 705-07, supported its holding by citing Hess v. St. Francis Regional Med. Center, 254 Kan. 715, 718, 869 P.2d 598 (1994) (“It is a fundamental proposition of Kansas appellate procedure that an appellate court obtains jurisdiction over the rulings identified in the notice of appeal.” [Emphasis added.]), Anderson v. Scheffler, 242 Kan. 857, 860-61, 752 P.2d 667 (1988) (court lacked jurisdiction to consider summary judgment ruling not identified in notice of appeal), and State v. Grant, 19 Kan. App. 2d 686, 875 P.2d 986, rev. denied 255 Kan. 1005 (1994) (finding the Court of Appeals did not have jurisdiction to address a ruling which was not included in tire notice of appeal). Even though each of these decisions focused on K.S.A. 60-2103(b)’s requirement that the notice of appeal identify tire judgment being appealed, the G.W.A. court extended the court’s reasoning to create a nonsta-tutoiy requirement — a statutory citation for the jurisdictional basis of the appeal. But the G.W.A. court did not provide a doctrinal basis for imposing a court-made requirement or for making that nonstatutory requirement jurisdictional.
Under our well-established caselaw holding that appellate jurisdiction is defined by statute, the G.W.A. court did not have authority to impose a nonstatutory jurisdictional requirement. Yet, *129this faulty reasoning in G.W.A. is relied upon as the basis for the holdings in Verge, 272 Kan. at 521-22, Woodling, 264 Kan. at 687, and Kerby, 259 Kan. at 106. Because of this faulty reasoning, I reject the majority’s reliance on tírese cases. Granted, the majority stops short of adopting the jurisdictional rationale of Verge, Woodling, Kerby, and G.W.A. Nevertheless, the holdings in these cases cannot be divorced from this faulting reasoning, and the majority’s rationale depends on these cases.
The majority attempts to find a substitute rationale by concluding that Supreme Court Rule 2.01 (2011 Kan. Ct. R. Annot. 9) imposes a procedural requirement that an appellant cite the statutory jurisdictional basis. As I will explain, I disagree with this conclusion because Rule 2.01 only requires a statutory citation to a statute that authorizes filing an appeal directly with the Kansas Supreme Court and because this requirement is not jurisdictional or binding.

Supreme Court Rule 2.01

Rule 2.01 (2011 Kan. Ct. R. Annot. 9) states:
“When an appeal is permitted directly to the Supreme Court, the notice of appeal shall be filed in the district court, shall be under the caption of the case in the district court and in substantially the following form:
“NOTICE OF APPEAL
“Notice is hereby given that (specify the party or parties taking the appeal) appeal(s) from (designate the judgment or part thereof appealed from) to the Supreme Court of the State of Kansas.
“The appeal hereby taken is directly to the Supreme Court on tire ground that (state ground on which direct appeal is considered to be permitted, including citation of statutory authority).” (Emphasis added.)
The first sentence of the suggested form parallels the requirements of K.S.A. 60-2103(b), requiring a specification of the parties taking the appeal and a designation of tire judgment or part thereof appealed from. The second sentence requests information not required by K.S.A. 60-2103(b), i.e., tire legal basis for taking an appeal directly to the Kansas Supreme Court.
It appears that the purpose for asking for a citation to a statute that allows a direct appeal to the Supreme Court is to discern whether tire appeal is correctly filed with the Supreme Court rather *130than the Court of Appeals. This purpose is made evident by comparing Rule 2.01 with Supreme Court Rule 2.02 (2011 Kan. Ct. R. Annot. 9), which includes a form for a notice of appeal for tiróse appeals that will be docketed with the Court of Appeals. The form provided for in Rule 2.02 is one sentence in length, providing: “Notice is hereby given that (specify the party or parties taking the appeal) appeal(s) from (designate the judgment or part thereof appealed from) to the Court of Appeals of the State of Kansas.” (2011 Kan. Ct. R. Annot. 10.) This sentence is identical to the first sentence in the Rule 2.01 form; as a result, both forms incorporate the K.S.A. 60-2103(b) requirements. But Rule 2.02 does not include the second sentence of Rule 2.01. As a result, an appellant need not justify taking an appeal directly to the Court of Appeals.
This distinction flows from the statutes that distinguish the jurisdiction between the two courts by providing that the Court of Appeals will hear all appeals that cannot be taken directly to the Kansas Supreme Court. See, e.g., K.S.A. 22-3601(a) (“Any appeal permitted to be taken from a final judgment of a district court in a criminal case shall be taken to the court of appeals, except in those cases reviewable by law in the district court and those cases where a direct appeal to the supreme court is required.”); K.S.A. 60-2101(a) (“The court of appeals shall have jurisdiction to hear appeals from district courts, except in those cases reviewable by law in the district court and in those cases where a direct appeal to the supreme court is required by law.”).
The starting point for distinguishing the appeals that must be filed in the Court of Appeals from the appeals that may be brought directly to the Supreme Court is K.S.A. 60-2101(b), which states in part:
“An appeal from a final judgment of a district court in any civil action in which a statute of this state or of the United States has been held unconstitutional shall be taken directly to the supreme court. Direct appeals from the district court to the supreme court in criminal cases shall be as prescribed by K.S.A. 22-3601 and 22-3602, and amendments thereto.”
In the present case, the State’s notice of appeal cited to K.S.A. 22-3602(b), which begins with the following words: “Appeals to the court of appeals may be taken by the prosecution.” (Emphasis *131added.) Obviously, K.S.A. 22-3602(b) is not a provision that would be cited under Rule 2.01 — it does not provide a basis for filing an appeal directly in the Kansas Supreme Court. Consequently, the State’s indication that it was appealing a question reserved was not procedurally required by Rule 2.01. Nor does Rule 2.01 require the State to cite to K.S.A. 60-2102, which is the statute that allowed the State to seek the relief it prayed for in its brief. K.S.A. 60-2102(a) states: “Except for any order or final decision of a district magistrate judge, the appellate jurisdiction of the court of appeals may be invoked by appeal as a matter of right from: ... (2) An order . . . that grants or refuses relief in the form of mandamus, quo warranto or habeas corpus.” (Emphasis added.)
Further, the citation to the legal basis for taking an appeal directly to the Kansas Supreme Court is not a jurisdictional requirement and a mistake in the citation is not fatal to an appeal. This is made clear by K.S.A. 20-3018(a), which provides in part:
“No case docketed either in the supreme court or the court of appeals shall be dismissed solely for the reason of having been filed in the wrong court, but shall be transferred by the supreme court to the court which the supreme court determines to have jurisdiction. Any such case shall be considered timely and properly filed in the court to which it is transferred.”
“Neither is tire failure to cite the proper appellate statute a jurisdictional prerequisite. [Citations omitted.]” State v. Martin, 232 Kan. 778, 780, 658 P.2d 1024 (1983).
In other words, the second sentence of the form in Rule 2.01, while helpful in determining if an appeal should be transferred from the Supreme Court to the Court of Appeals, serves no jurisdictional basis. Nor does Rule 2.01 require the appellant to include within the notice of appeal a statement of the jurisdictional basis for granting the relief sought. In other words, Rule 2.01 does not require the citation that the majority or the Verge line of cases requires, nor does it imply that any jurisdictional statement, if made, should be deemed binding or critical to jurisdiction.

Right to Appeal and Relief

The majority opinion and the Verge line of cases are also contrary to a point this court has emphasized: “The right to appeal should *132not be unduly restricted.” Martin, 232 Kan. at 780. Further, we have generally held that a notice of appeal should be liberally construed and a defect in the notice should not be a basis for relief unless the defect results in prejudice to a party. See, e.g., Associated Wholesale Grocers, Inc. v. Americold Corporation, 293 Kan. 633, 270 P.3d 1074 (2011) (applying liberal construction to notice of appeal that did not include complete caption or all district court rulings). In Harpool, 246 Kan. 226, Martin, 232 Kan. 778, Grimes, 229 Kan. 143, Whorton, 225 Kan. 251, and other cases such as State v. Wilkins, 269 Kan. 256, 7 P.3d 252 (2000), and State v. Ransom, 268 Kan. 653, 999 P.2d 272 (2000), we generally adopted the policy that our rules regarding a notice of appeal “ ‘should not be overly technical or detailed. The notice of appeal is not a device to alert the parties to all possible arguments on appeal. That is the purpose and function of the docketing statements and briefs filed by die parties.'” Wilkins, 269 Kan. at 269 (quoting State v. Boyd, 268 Kan. 600, 999 P.2d 265 [2000]); see Bryson v. Wichita State University, 19 Kan. App. 2d 1104, 1106, 880 P.2d 800, rev. denied 256 Kan. 994 (1994) (pointing to nonbinding nature of docketing statement’s list of issues on appeal); but see Boyd, 268 Kan. at 605-08 (applying prejudice rule to ambiguity regarding judgment from which appeal was taken but distinguishing Kerby and G.W.A.).
Here, it cannot be denied that the State cited one ground for tire appeal in its notice of appeal — a question reserved- — and yet ultimately sought relief from the district court’s judgment rather than a prospective ruling in its brief. And, as the State admitted at oral argument, it never explicitly amended its notice of appeal. Yet, the citation in the notice of appeal was not required; it was superfluous. Under that circumstance, I would apply our liberal construction of a notice of appeal and strike the unnecessary statement. Of course, that would not be appropriate if doing so resulted in prejudice to Roland Berreth or if the Court of Appeals had been left to comb the record to determine the basis of jurisdiction. See Kerby, 259 Kan. at 105-06. Neither of those circumstances is present, however.
Rather, Berreth and the Court of Appeals were clearly alerted to the nature of the relief sought by the State. In its brief to the *133Court of Appeals in Berreth I, tire State made no attempt to present a question reserved. As Berreth points out, the State did not argue a ground for the court’s consideration of a question reserved as it presumably would have done if that was the basis for the argument presented to the Court of Appeals. See State v. Skolaut, 286 Kan. 219, 225, 182 P.3d 1231 (2008) (“[Appellate courts will accept appeal of questions reserved when the issues are ‘matters of statewide interest important to the correct and uniform administration of the criminal law and the interpretation of statutes.’ ”). Rather, the State attacked Berreth’s sentence, arguing the district judge erred in finding Berreth’s sentence for aggravated kidnapping was multiplicitous with his crimes of criminal sodomy. In its second issue, the State cited K.S.A. 60-1507(f) to argue that Ber-reth’s request for collateral relief was untimely. Consistent with the arguments it made throughout the brief, the State concluded by requesting that “[t]he defendant’s convictions should be reinstated. The district [j]udge’s decision of March 9, 2005 . . . should be reversed and the original sentence should be reimposed.”
In responding to these arguments in his Berreth I appellate brief before the Court of Appeals, Berreth clearly understood that the State was requesting relief from tire judgment. Berreth did not object to a consideration of whether his conviction for aggravated kidnapping should have been vacated; he did not assert that the State was limited to a question reserved. Instead he argued his lesser sentence for kidnapping “must be affirmed. The district court did not err.” Further, as discussed by the majority, Berreth had asked the district court to consider the action as a K.S.A. 60-1507 proceeding. Then, on appeal, in responding to the State’s issue that the attack was untimely under K.S.A. 60-1507(f), Berreth did not argue that the statute did not apply; rather, he argued that it should not be applied retroactively. Because both parties argued the appeal on the basis of K.S.A. 60-1507,1 disagree with the majority’s characterization that the Court of Appeals sua sponte determined the jurisdictional basis for the appeal. Berreth made it clear he sought relief under K.S.A. 60-1507, and the State’s brief clearly sought relief from an erroneous ruling it considered to have *134been decided under K.S.A. 60-1507. The State made the election the majority requires.
The Berreth I court had jurisdiction to grant the remedy requested in the State’s Berreth I brief by reversing Berreth’s sentence after concluding the district judge erred in determining Ber-reth’s sentences were multiplicitous. See State v. Berreth, No. 94,310, 2007 WL 806002 (Kan. App. 2007) (unpublished opinion) (Berreth I).
Yet, the majority in this appeal appears to hold that the State’s focus in its Berreth II briefs on a question reserved erases the State’s Berreth I argument. This conclusion means that a party’s postjudgment actions can eviscerate the jurisdictional basis for a judgment. Such a principle would be contrary to all principles related to the finality of a judgment. The Berreth II Court of Appeals was justified in looking at the record in Berreth I and examining the basis for its own decision. The Berreth II Court of Appeals correctly determined the Berreth I judgment was valid and should not be set aside. I would affirm that holding.
Rosen, J., joins in the foregoing dissent.