When I was growing up, on Saturdays the television would often be tuned to the ABC program “Wide World of Sports,” with its stirring introduction depicting both the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. Two recent appellate court rulings, one from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, and the other from the Pennsylvania Superior Court, likewise illustrate these themes.

To end this column on a happier note, let’s begin with the agony of defeat. In its March 19 ruling in Conboy v. U.S. Small Business Administration, No. 20-1726, the Third Circuit ruled that counsel for appellant was liable to pay to the opposing prevailing party on appeal frivolous-appeal damages because losing counsel had failed to engage in “proper appellate advocacy” when he “simply took the summary judgment section of his district court brief and copied and pasted it into his appellate brief, with minor changes such as swapping ‘defendant’ for ‘appellee.’”