Cite as: 532 U. S. 757 (2001)
Opinion of the Court
if they were parties below, will remain parties on appeal, "unless the notice clearly indicates a contrary intent." Ibid.
If we had any doubt that Appellate Rule 3(c)(2) was meant only to facilitate, not to impede, access to an appeal, we would find corroboration in a related ameliorative rule, Appellate Rule 3(c)(4), which provides: "An appeal must not be dismissed for informality of form or title of the notice of appeal, or for failure to name a party whose intent to appeal is otherwise clear from the notice." Cf. this Court's Rule 14.5 ("If the Clerk determines that a petition submitted timely and in good faith is in a form that does not comply with this Rule [governing the content of petitions for certiorari] or with Rule 33 or Rule 34 [governing document preparation], the Clerk will return it with a letter indicating the deficiency. A corrected petition received no more than 60 days after the date of the Clerk's letter will be deemed timely.").
In Torres v. Oakland Scavenger Co., 487 U. S. 312 (1988), it is true, we held, that a notice of appeal that omitted the name of a particular appellant, through a clerical error, was ineffective to take an appeal for that party. Id., at 318 (construing Rule 3(c) prior to the ameliorative changes made in 1993).4 Becker's notice, however, did not suffer from any failure to "specify the party or parties taking the appeal." Fed. Rule App. Proc. 3(c)(1)(A). Other opinions of this Court are in full harmony with the view that imperfections in noticing an appeal should not be fatal where no genuine doubt exists about who is appealing, from what judgment, to which appellate court. See Smith v. Barry, 502 U. S., at 245, 248-249 (holding that "a document intended to serve as an appellate brief [filed within the time specified by Appellate Rule 4 and containing the information required by Appellate Rule 3] may qualify as the notice of
4 The Advisory Committee intended the elaborate 1993 amendment of Appellate Rule 3(c) "to reduce the amount of satellite litigation spawned by [Torres]." Advisory Committee's Notes on Fed. Rule App. Proc. 3, 28 U. S. C. App., p. 590.
767
Page: Index Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007