My brief to the Second Court of Appeals in New York had reached the court since Monday. Couple of hours ago I thought it might be time to check on my filing and found THIS for why my filing was defective.
So the question is: Are you kidding me? Even assuming it was wrong to include "et al." in the title, is that really a reason to consider that a defect in need for correction? I don't think that is worthy of being held against an attorney let alone a pro se filer.
But who said that was wrong to begin with. The applicable part of the rule she mentioned is FRAP 32 (a)(2)(C) which states that the cover of a brief should include "the title of the case". How does she understand the "title" to contain the names of all defendants? In addition the rule followed that by "(see Rule 12(a))". If we go to FRAP 12(a) we find it saying that "the circuit clerk must docket the appeal under the title of the district-court action". Also, as an additional support for how a case title may not contain the names of all defendants in the case, the rule added that the appellate court "must identify the appellant, adding the appellant's name if necessary". The defendant names are part of the litigant names on the case and if all litigant names should be included in the title of the case the name of the appellant would always be included in the title and therefore there would be no reason for the part mentioned above about adding the appellant's name .
The district court had the title "Kammona v. Midsummer Investment Ltd. et al". I only added my first name and wrote all names with capital letters.
