By Michael Wein

Appealable final judgments have been described as a legal quagmire that for “the past forty or fifty years … no one issue has been the subject of more opinions than the question of whether a trial court order is appealable …” Brewster v. Woodhaven Bldg. & Dev. Inc., 360 Md. 602, 623 (2000). Going further, the Court of Appeals noted “[n]either the Code nor the Rules define when an order or ruling is sufficiently final to qualify as a judgment…’[W]hether a ruling is final’ … is frequently so close a question that decision of that issue either way can be supported with equally forceful arguments, and that it is impossible to devise a formula to resolve all marginal cases coming within what might well be called the ‘twilight zone’ of finality”) Circuit City Stores, Inc. v. Rockville Pike Joint Venture Ltd. P’ship, 376 Md. 331, 347 (2003), quoting in part, Gillespie v. United States Steel Corp., 379 U.S. 148, 152 (1964)). The solution for the “marginal” and/or inadvertent non-final judgment cases being actually decided on the merits by the Maryland appellate courts, with reasonable continuing predictability for the vast majority of appeals that do not have these concerns, may be found in a Federal Rule and legal interpretation, and recent developments support a similar Rules adoption. Read More…