I've been away from the blog for a little while, a fact that I hope to rectify in the coming days, weeks and months. However, one of the reasons that I had been absent is that I was working on an appellate brief from a Worcester Housing Court decision. I bring that up only to use this as a teachable moment on the subject of time stamping.
When I completed my work on the appellate brief and was prepared to have the materials delivered to the Appeals Court for filing, I asked our first year associate/courier in this instance to bring a second copy of the cover letter and receive a time stamp upon delivery, and ask for the name of the person accepting service. This is a typical task that I ask anyone who delivers something for me to Court to complete and is harmless to those on the receiving end.
Here is the lesson -- after about 35 days passed I received notification from the Appeals Court that pursuant to Rule 17A(1) my appeal was being dismissed for failure to prosecute (i.e., I didn't turn in my brief). Luckily for me I was able to pull the time stamped (with name) copy of a cover letter from the file, called the Appeals Court and cleared up the confusion. It was a simple fix to a problem that sometimes happens with a busy clerk's office, but a significantly important lesson for all lawyers - it takes about thirty seconds to get a time stamp, and you may just be saving yourself from a huge problem (including a potential malpractice claim).
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