A typo in electronic filing doesn’t warrant dismissal of a motion to appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit concluded on Monday, even though the typo was corrected after the appeals deadline.
“There may well be cases in which a filing is so riddled with errors that it cannot fairly be considered a notice of appeal…but that is not the case here,” the court wrote on May 3 in Vince v. Rock County, Wis.
Although forgiving, the court did warn lawyers to be more careful when e-filing. “Otherwise, counsel may find that “a computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history — with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila,” the court wrote, quoting what it called a not-so-old adage.
Scot Vince, a longtime confidential informant for local law enforcement, had sued the county after being “severely beaten” and “strangled” by a jail inmate in 2008. He claimed that, because he was part of a witness protection program and had testified several times against inmates, he should not have been housed in the jail’s general population following an arrest for bail jumping.
A magistrate judge determined that Vince’s injury could not be attributed to any of the defendants named in the suit — including a prosecutor and an investigator — and dismissed the case.
On March 12, the last day of the appeal period, Vince’s lawyer used the mandatory electronic filing system to send a notice of appeal. Unfortunately, he used the wrong event code. The clerk’s office caught the mistake, e-mailed him back three days later and told him to refile using the correct code.
He did so on March 18. The electronic docketing system failed to recognize the original filing date and listed the appeal as filed March 18 — six days late.
The appeal was forwarded to the 7th Circuit, where staff raised the question of whether it was timely. But dismissal was too technical a pill for the 7th Circuit to swallow.
The per curiam decision was issued by judges William Bauer, Richard Posner and Terence Evans. It came as a great relief to Edmund Benedict Moran Jr., a solo practitioner in Chicago who represented Vince.
“I didn’t really exhale until I got this opinion,” said Moran, who added that his mistake wasn’t monumental. “I hit an entry that wasn’t quite the right one. But ultimately, it had all the right ingredients in it.”
Tresa Baldas can be contacted at [email protected].
