FIRST-HALF 2018 STATISTICS

(Posted June 29, 2018) Now that the dust is starting to settle from all that federal appellate news this week, it’s safe to return to Virginia courts. At the midpoint of 2018, let’s see what the Virginia appellate numbers show.

SUPREME COURT OF VIRGINIA

Decisions

The Supreme Court of Virginia has handed down 34 published opinions and orders, and 12 unpublished orders. For comparison’s sake, the court decided 79 appeals by opinion and 59 by order in calendar 2017.

Writs

The court’s website lists 49 writs that have been granted since the beginning of the year. It is conceivable but not likely that there may be a couple more that aren’t showing up on the page because they’ve already been decided. (The court removes appeals from the writs-granted page after an opinion comes down.) Last year, the court granted 112 writs, including one certified-question case.

Upcoming panels and sessions

The justices will convene three more sets of writ panels in 2018, in addition to the three that are already in the books. In late August, we’ll get the annual road shows, where the court sends two panels out of Richmond to hear arguments. This year’s road shows will convene in Lovingston (Nelson County) and here in Virginia Beach, both on August 30. We’ll also see one in Richmond, probably on August 29. After that, conventional panels (all in the Supreme Court Building in Richmond) will meet October 16 and December 4. There are two sessions (where lawyers argue merits appeals to the full court) left: the weeks of September 10-14 and October 29-November 2. Four sessions are already in this year’s rearview mirror.

The David/Goliath Index

As I promised you on May 11, I will quarterly announce how the Big Guys and the Little Guys are faring at Ninth and Franklin. (See that essay for a description of the concept.) For the second quarter, David won four appeals in published opinions and Goliath won eight times, for a D-GI of 33/67. While that may sound lopsided, David actually has won almost twice as frequently as he did in 2017 and 2016. For the year, the Index is 32/68.

COURT OF APPEALS OF VIRGINIA

Decisions

Thus far the CAV has decided 29 appeals by published opinions and 137 by unpub. (The CAV releases far more of these decisions because by statute, it has to explain the reasons for each ruling. Most appeals in the SCV die with a one-sentence refusal order that virtually no one sees.)

David-Goliath Lite It’s possible to calculate something of a David-Goliath Index for the Court of Appeals, too, using two case areas: criminal appeals and Workers’ Comp cases. The court has decided 12 Comp appeals and the employee has gone 4-8, resulting in a 33/67 D-GI in that field. In the other field, Goliath is running away with it. The prosecution has won 89 out of the 97 criminal decisions thus far in 2018; that adds up to an Index of 8/92.