Home › New Mexico › Rules of Appellate Procedure › Rule 12-406

Court Rules Network • courtrules.net

NMRA 12-406

Not legal advice. Verify against official sources before relying on this text in any legal matter.

Rule 12-406 Timely disposition of appeals.

ARTICLE 4 Disposition

← Previous Rule 12-405: Opinions. Next → Rule 12-501: Certiorari from the Supreme Court to the district court regarding denial of habeas corpus.

Rule Text

A. Timely disposition of appeal required. The timely disposition of appeals is an essential requirement of justice.

B. Submission to panel. In any appeal or other case pending before the Supreme Court or Court of Appeals on a nonsummary calendar, the Court should render a decision or otherwise dispose of the case within six (6) months of the date the case is submitted to a panel for disposition. The clerk shall notify the parties at the time of submission that the case has been submitted.

C. Tolling of time. If after submission, supplemental briefing is ordered, if the case is referred for settlement or under any similar circumstances, the time for disposition shall be tolled.

Amendment history: Approved, effective July 1, 1990; as amended by Supreme Court Order No. 05-8300-018, effective October 11, 2005.

Plain-English Summary (for reference only — not a substitute for the rule text above)

This summary is not the rule. The rule text controls.

Courts are supposed to decide appeals quickly. This rule says that getting a timely decision is a basic part of fair justice, so judges cannot let cases sit around for no reason.

For appeals that go through the regular review process (not simplified or "summary" cases), the Supreme Court or Court of Appeals should decide the case within six months after it is handed over to a panel of judges for a decision. Once a case is submitted to a panel, the court clerk must tell everyone involved that the six-month clock has started.

Sometimes things come up that can pause this six-month deadline. If the judges ask for more written arguments (supplemental briefing), send the case to settlement, or run into some other similar situation, the clock stops running until that issue is resolved. Once it's resolved, the clock starts again. This gives the court some flexibility while still pushing for appeals to be handled without unnecessary delay.

Committee Notes

Committee commentary. — This rule was amended in 2005 to reflect lengthened briefing times and the actual time required by court procedures prior to submission of a case to a panel for decision and also to eliminate the burdensome record-keeping requirements in the former rule. The former rule had been adopted in 1990 and provided not only for timely disposition of appeals but also for periodic statements of reason why a case had not been disposed of in a period consistent with the rule.

The former rule indicated a decision should be filed within ten (10) months of the notice of appeal. Since the enactment of the former rule, Rule 12-210 NMRA has been amended to lengthen the parties' briefing times. In addition, it did not appear that the former rule considered the time required in the Court of Appeals to initially calendar or recalendar a case or the time required in both appellate courts to make satisfactory arrangements, copy and transmit the record proper, inspect the transcript for errors, and transmit the transcript to the appellate court. The time from notice of appeal to decision should include time for (1) filing the docketing statement (30 days - Rule 12-208 NMRA), (2) payment for and transmission of the record proper (14 days minimum - Rule 12-209(B) NMRA), (3) assignment to calendar (21 to 90 days or greater depending on recalendaring - Rule 12-210 NMRA), (4) designation, satisfactory arrangements, preparation of transcript, objection period, transmission to appellate court (15 + 15 + 60 + 15 + 7 = 112 days, assuming no cross-designations and no objections - Rule 12-211(C) NMRA), (5) briefing time (111 days - Rule 12-210(B) NMRA; Rule 12-308(B) NMRA) and (6) time for submission in the next month after briefing is completed (30 days), for a total of 319 days or more.

For both courts, the period of time between the initiation of a case and disposition often lengthens as a result of events outside the sole control of the courts. For this reason, and in order to concentrate at present on the period of time within the sole control of the appellate courts, no aspirational goal is included for the period of time between the initiation of a case in one of the appellate courts and its disposition by that court. Nevertheless, the times allowed by the rules to prepare the record and transcript, calendar the case, and brief the issues is a measure of the length of delay to be expected after the initiation of a case and before its submission to a panel for decision.

The former rule required a decision within three months of submission. The respective courts are closer to an average of six (6) months as time from submission to disposition. The Supreme Court suggested the six-month time frame to the Committee in hopes that the enactment of this rule will encourage both appellate courts to decide most of their cases within six (6) months of submission. Thus, the period for a case to be decided after submission is aspirational.

← Previous Rule 12-405: Opinions. Next → Rule 12-501: Certiorari from the Supreme Court to the district court regarding denial of habeas corpus.