Avoiding Appellate Mistakes: A Primer for the General Practitioner (Florida‪)‬

The average general practitioner in Florida does not have more than a handful of appeals in the course of a career. A busy litigator who is not an appellate specialist is unlikely to have more than one case on appeal each year, and often less. As a result, even an experienced general practitioner, who can recite the Florida Rules of Civil Procedure or the Florida Evidence Code from memory, may not be intimately familiar with the intricacies of appellate practice when undertaking an appeal from an adverse ruling. The appellate process has its own set of perils for the unwary practitioner, some of which merely telegraph inexperience with the process, and some of which can be fatal to an appeal. The following is a partial list of common mistakes in Florida appellate practice, which are intended to assist the general practitioner handling an appeal. Failure to Identify a Final Order