Federal Appeals Court Reversal Rates Show Disparities

By Melissa Heelan Stanzione, Bloomberg BNA

The chances of winning a reversal in federal appeals court in 2015 were 8.6 percent, according to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.

The data was featured on the AO’s “Just the Facts” website Dec. 20, a new feature that consolidates data from the Judiciary Data and Analysis Office, an AO employee told Bloomberg BNA.

A circuit-by-circuit breakdown of the reversal rates for 2015 is available elsewhere from the AO, and shows that the Seventh Circuit leads with 18.3 percent. The Tenth Circuit has the lowest reversal rate: 4.7 percent.

This data was drawn from cases in six areas: criminal, prisoner petitions, U.S. civil, private civil, bankruptcy and administrative appeals.

Appeals of decisions in U.S. civil cases and prisoner petitions had the lowest rates of reversals, while the reversal rate for bankruptcy cases was 24.4 percent in 2015.

Jackie Koszczuk, public information officer with the agency, didn’t know why the rate for these cases was noticeably higher than the circuit median, but noted that in 2015, the Eleventh Circuit had a 68.2 percent reversal rate. There “may be an isolated case” or set of bankruptcy cases “that had an impact” on the average, she said.

The average time it took to dispose of a case fell 20 percent between 2011 and 2015, from 10.8 months to 8.6 months.

At the same time, the total volume of appeals “continued to steadily decline,” the site said.

The AO was unable to comment on any correlation between the case disposition time and volume of appeals.

Just the Facts is “part of our ongoing efforts to increase transparency and public understanding of the federal Judiciary,” Koszczuk said. The site will be updated “a few times a year,” she said.