Illinois Appellate Lawyer Blog
Peggy Lee Hall claimed she was injured when she slipped on ice in a parking lot owned by Naper Gold Hospitality LLC. She sued Naper, but the company got summary judgment because Hall did not show facts that there had been an unnatural accumulation of ice.
Hall appealed Naper’s summary judgment. But the Second District Illinois Appellate Court dismissed the appeal “because of the flagrant and, frankly, appalling violations of supreme court rules committed by plaintiff’s [Hall] attorney … and his law firm … in the handling of this appeal.”
These were Hall’s violations:
• Hall’s statement of jurisdiction had “nothing whatsoever to do with the instant appeal.”
• The original statement of facts had been pasted into Hall’s brief from an appeal in a different case. And when Hall’s lawyer amended the statement of facts, he (1) filed it without asking for permission to do so, and (2) what he did file “barely acquaint[ed] this court with the procedural history of the case or the issues involved.”
• Illinois Supreme Court “Rule 341(h)(3) requires appellant [in this case, Hall] to include a ‘concise statement of the applicable standard of review for each issue. with citation to authority.’ … Plaintiff’s brief violates this rule in that nowhere is a standard of review set forth.”
• These violations “came on top of plaintiff’s filing of a noncompliant appendix.” The appellate court twice ordered Hall’s lawyer to file the appendix, the second time under threat of dismissal of the appeal.
• Hall’s legal argument contained insufficient citation to supporting authority.
The appellate court acknowledged the harshness of its ruling, “but where the jurisdictional statement and the statement of facts do not even pertain to the case on appeal but were copied wholesale from an unrelated brief, where the brief contains no standards of review, and where, most important, plaintiff’s arguments are conclusory and not supported by any authority, we have no choice but to strike the brief and dismiss the appeal.”
Read the whole case, Hall v. Naper Gold Hospitality LLC, 2012 IL App (2d) 111151, by clicking here.