Filing Time Waits for No Man

Jones v. South Carolina Department of Corrections, No. 09-7309 (Fourth Circuit, March 25, 2010).

First things first: this is an "unpublished" decision, meaning that it is not binding precedent in the Fourth Circuit. However, the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure are clear that, even though it's only persuasive, not precedential, you can still cite it all you want as long as the court gets a copy. So the panel can't bury it in the Federal Appendix, never to return.

Of course, the principle you'd cite this case for is the obvious, "appeal within the proper time limits or lose it." You get 30 days from the district court decision. This particular pro se prisoner filing a civil rights suit waited two months, filing on June 1 for an April 1 decision.

And, even though he claims he didn't know about the district court's ruling until a month and a half after it happened (May 15), he overshot the fourteen day window (REMEMBER - if time limits exceed eleven days, weekends count!) to file for a re-opening of the case by three days, and just filed a plain vanilla appeal.

As such, the Fourth Circuit didn't want to bother.