Robert Brundage, Partner and Kimberley Parrish, Associate co-authored, "Article III Standing to Appeal in Federal Court: What Business Lawyers Need to Know," which was published in the International Association of Defense Counsel's Defense Counsel Journal.
Federal-court practitioners will likely have heard of the “irreducible minimum” of standing, which Article III of the United States Constitution requires of every plaintiff on every claim: the party invoking the court’s jurisdiction must have an actual or imminent, personalized, concrete injury; the injury must be traceable to the conduct complained of in the lawsuit; and there must be a reasonable probability that a favorable court ruling would redress the injury. Lack of Article III standing is a silver bullet: it is jurisdictional, it cannot be waived, the court must notice a standing defect even if no party raises it, and the appellant’s lack of standing requires dismissal.
Less well known is that an appellant in federal court – whether plaintiff or defendant – must separately have standing to appeal. Standing can present a fatal obstacle to appeals of interest to business lawyers, including class-action settlements, bankruptcies, challenges to government action, cases involving intervenors, and even occasionally appeals from jury verdicts. Understanding appellate-standing requirements can help you stop an adversary’s appeal cold and can keep you from spending time and money on your own client’s appeal that cannot succeed. This article examines the obscure-but-useful area of standing to appeal, highlighting recurring scenarios where parties do or don’t have standing and the considerations at play.
To read the entire article click here.