When petitioning for review of a published Court of Appeal opinion and when briefing the case if the Supreme Court grants review, you’ll likely be talking about the appellate opinion to some extent. When doing so, what’s the best practice for citing the appellate decision in your papers?
There are two options — citing to the typed version of the opinion that the Court of Appeal sent you, or citing a published version, preferably the opinion in the official reports.
Jake Dear — the Supreme Court’s chief supervising attorney — recommends citing to the typed opinion in the petition for review (or in the answer to the petition or the reply to the answer), but citing to the Cal.App. opinion in briefing after the court has granted review. The advice makes sense because it’s the more reader-friendly way to go.
The petition for review must include the Court of Appeal opinion as an attachment (rule 8.504(b)(4)), which will usually be the typed opinion from the Court of Appeal. So, it will be most convenient for the justices and their staff attorneys to refer to the attachment that is readily at hand. In briefing, however, citing to the opinion in the official reports is easier on the court. This is because you’ll be citing what the court will be citing — when the court discusses the appellate decision in its opinion, the court will probably be citing to the official reports version under the relatively new rule generally allowing continued citation of review-granted opinions (rules 8.1105(e)(1)(B), 8.1115(e)(1)).
And here’s additional advice from Norm Vance, the director of the court’s criminal central staff: at the petition for review stage, use bookmarks. He suggests inserting a bookmark link to a significant passage in the copy of the Court of Appeal opinion that is part of the e-filed petition. Vance reports that some attorneys bookmark not only the start of the opinion but also its various sections – e.g., the facts and different parts of the legal discussion. He says that can be very helpful and he adds that, although it’s not hard to find the relevant portion of the opinion, “a pinpoint e-cite would impress me.”
What practitioner wouldn’t want to impress the justices and their staffs and to make their lives a little less complicated?
