Appeals in the digital age: Using [sic] when quoting a text message.

by Kirsten E. Small

This opinion by the Supreme Court of South Carolina caught my eye yesterday. The fact portion of the opinion involved the quotation of numerous text messages, which didn't phase me until I got to this one:

""Leav me tha f*k alone im nt gna txt u bak and I want nothng 2 do w u so jus get out mx [sic] life already."

My first thought was, "Why bother? The entire message is one long [sic]." But then I looked up the proper usage of [sic], and learned that "sic" is a word (not an abbreviation) derived from Latin that means "intentionally so written."  So, the SC Supreme Court used [sic] not to point out the unconventional (to put it mildly) spelling of the text message, but rather to indicate that an actual error ("mx" instead of "my") was original to the text message, not an error in transcription by the court.

In other news, an amendment to SC Appellate Rule 219 became effective yesterday. The amended rule clarifies the procedure for seeking initial hearing en banc by the S.C. Court of Appeals.

Those 14 pages at the beginning of your brief? Yeah, they count.

By Kirsten E. Small

I do a CLE program called "The Ten Commandments of Appellate Brief Writing," in which I tell my audience that a key goal of an appellate brief (other than persuading the court, of course) is not to hack off the judges. (Depending on the crowd and the proximity of my presentation to cocktail hour, "hack off" may be replaced by a more colorful term, but you get the point.)

A case out of the Seventh Circuit gives us a sterling example of how not to achieve that key goal: exceed the word limit and then offer a flimsy excuse when you get caught.