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Waiting Game: How Long Does It Take the N.C. Court Of Appeals To Issue Opinions?

Rakes,KenzieBy Kenzie M. Rakes

I am often called upon to answer questions related to pending appeals because I recently completed a clerkship at the Court of Appeals of North Carolina. When asked how long it will take the Court of Appeals to issue an opinion, I always say it is impossible to know with certainty, but the court has an internal policy of trying to issue opinions within 90 days of the date the appeal is scheduled for argument. After being involved in an appeal as an advocate, I decided to determine how long it takes the court to issue opinions.

First, I calculated the number of days it took the Court of Appeals to issue opinions in 2015 by counting the days from the date the appeal was scheduled for argument (regardless of whether oral argument was granted) until the date the opinion was issued. Not all appeals have an argument date. For example, some opinions are issued after the Supreme Court of North Carolina remands the case or after the Court of Appeals grants a party’s petition for rehearing. If the appeal was not argued, I treated the date that the appeal was remanded or the date the petition for rehearing was granted as the argument date.

Based on this methodology, I determined that the court issued opinions an average of 77 days after argument in 2015. The median was 62 days.

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