On the bright line rule of Jones v. Jones

Back in October, in the case of Jones v. Jones, the Virginia Court of Appeals in an opinion by Judge Humphreys joined by Judge Elder and Senior Judge Annunziata held that the notice of appeal was a nullity because appellant's counsel was suspended from practicing law at the time it was filed.

The ABA Journal eReport published this article about the case, which begins: "If an attorney with a suspended license files a notice of appeal, the client will pay a price, even if neither the lawyer nor the client knew of the suspension, the Virginia Court of Appeals has ruled."

Carolyn Elefant weighs in: "Stupid result, in my view. Where an attorney knowingly files an appeal and isn't licensed to practice, he deserves blame for the result. But where an attorney doesn't know, why should the client be penalized? In this case, the events all took place over a short period, with the former attorney withdrawing at the beginning of July 2005, the new attorney filing notice of appeal August 9, 2005 and the suspension ending on August 25, 2005. Had the client's new attorney realized that he was suspended through the end of August 2005, he could have asked the client's former attorney to lodge the appeal (or the client could have filed pro se) and stepped in to the case when his suspension concluded. The court's approach rejected this sensible outcome and penalizes the client for an easily avoidable situation."

Fair or not, it sounds like a Virginia ruling to me. Appellate practice in Virginia is gotcha-law. The Court of Appeals based its decision on Nerri v. Adu-Gyamfi, 270 Va. 28, 613 S.E.2d 429 (2005), which in turn relies on Wellmore Coal Corp. v. Harman Mining Corp., 264 Va. 279, 568 S.E.2d 671 (2002), the case involving the multi-million dollar judgment from Buchanan County where only the Kentucky lawyer signed the notice of appeal. Similarly, the Washington Post series on the sorry state of funding for indigent defense in Virginia noted the high level of appeals in criminal cases that are dismissed on procedural grounds. It's pass/fail, the Rules are not intuitive, counsel has relearn them for every appeal. Somehow, the federal appeals court manages to get by without the same harshness, in fact, the clerk's office pretty much spoon-feeds the lawyers from start to finish. I've never heard any of the judges or justices state why they believe the state court rules are just. Steve Emmert in his commentary on the case charitably attributes to Virginia's appellate benches the view that they "genuinely dislike procedural dismissals, and try to avoid them where they can."

Also, I don't know whether the outcome in Jones would be different in a federal case As Marcia Oddi explains here, linking to this article by Howard Bashman, lawyers get fried in federal appeals, too (particularly by two famous Seventh Circuit judges).

I also wonder whether Jones would have been different if the client had also signed the notice of appeal - unlike the parties in the Wellmore case, an individual could represent himself or herself.