Cross-Compliance
“Let’s go hand in hand, not one before the other.”
“Never anything can be amiss,
When simpleness and duty tender it.”
Appellants aren’t the only ones with issues. Sometimes, appellees need to request relief of their own from the judgment below. Except when the issues on appeal are limited by the Court of Appeals, Tennessee Rule of Appellate Procedure 13(a) permits the appellee to raise issues on appeal in addition to those raised by the appellant. This takes the form of a cross-appeal in the appellee’s principal brief.
When this happens, the appellant must not only reply to the responsive brief, they may also file a response of their own to the appellee’s cross-appeal in that brief (see Tenn. R. App. P. § 27(c)), to which the appellee may file their own reply to the cross-response. To summarize: principal brief, principal response, cross-appeal, reply to principal response, response to cross-appeal, reply to response of cross-appeal.
Say that fast five times. (Be careful, you might pull a muscle.)
As an aside, there is technically no such thing as a “cross-appeal,” but most of us call it that because we need a short name for when an appellee seeks their own relief on appeal. When responding to a cross-appeal, it makes sense for an appellant to combine their response with their reply in one document, with a title such as “Appellant’s Combined Reply Brief and Brief on Cross-Appeal.” This saves time, effort, and, a client favorite, money.
Which brings me to the Certificate of Compliance.
Every brief subject to word limitations under the Tennessee Rules of Appellate Procedure must contain a certificate by the filing attorney that the brief complies with applicable word limitations and showing the number of words in the brief. (See Tenn. R. App. P. 30(e).)
This gets interesting when filing a combined reply/response brief. As a combined brief is really two-briefs-in-one, it must contain not one, but TWO Certificates of Compliance, showing the word count of each brief separately! Double the brief, double the compliance.
I keep trying to tell people how much fun this is. Hopefully they are reading.
Just remember: as an appellant, if you are staring down a cross-appeal, make sure you are cross-compliant.
