Rule 6.907 Scope of review

Here's a plain English summary of this rule:

When you appeal an equity case, the appeals court looks at everything fresh. This is called "de novo" review. The judges reconsider the facts and the law on their own, without simply deferring to what the trial judge decided.

For most other cases, the appeals court has a different job. It only checks whether the trial court made legal mistakes. The judges are not retrying the case or reweighing the evidence. They are looking for errors in how the law was applied.

If a case was decided by a judge alone, without a jury, the judge's factual findings carry special weight. These findings are treated the same way a jury's verdict would be treated. This means the appeals court will generally accept those facts as true, as long as there is enough evidence to support them. The appeals court will not second-guess the trial judge's factual conclusions just because it might have seen things differently.