This month’s column focuses on an issue that I have seen arising with increasing frequency in my own appellate practice in Pennsylvania state court, which focuses on civil appeals. A while back, I wrote about the ever-increasing number of petitions for review that parties were filing after failing to convince the trial court to certify an interlocutory order either for appeal by permission or appeal as of right. My concern was that such petitions for review, which are rarely successful, represented a waste of client resources and an unfortunate diversion of judicial attention away from the more important work of correctly deciding cases that are properly before the appellate court on the merits.

The petition for review in a state appellate court, which is akin to a petition for writ of mandamus in a federal appellate court, is an original proceeding that a disgruntled litigant can initiate directly in the appellate court relating to a case that remains pending in the trial court. The most frequent type of petition for review that I encounter in my practice is one challenging a trial court’s refusal to certify an interlocutory order for immediate appeal by permission.