After a case is determined in County or Supreme Court either party may want to appeal the case. Nowadays, after a case is over, you may see a lawyer on TV saying that they would appeal. In order to appeal lawyers have to submit a brief of why the case needs to be appealed. A good share of the cases do not go beyond the hearing as they do not meet the standards for an appeal. There has to be some point of law that was not followed. Or it can be evidence that was submitted improperly. Or the sentence is deemed too harsh. Not liking the the results of the case is not good enough grounds for an appeal. But that doesn’t stop lawyers from trying to appeal.

From colonial times until 1846 there was the Court for the Trial of Impeachments and Correction of Errors which was a statewide court. The New York State Archives has a collection of records for this court. This web page has a link to finding aids if you want to make a visit to the Archives and look at these early court appeals.

Starting in 1847 there was a new Court of Appeals. Again, this had statewide jurisdiction. The NY State Archives has records for this court from 1847 to at least 1940. Use the link above to see the finding aid for those appeals. These records have never been filmed nor digitized. Maybe they will be digitized sometime in the future.

It only took less than 50 years for the Court of Appeals to get overloaded. In 1896 a new court was created at a level between the County level and the statewide Court of Appeals. The Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court split up the State into 4 sections that they call Departments.

Photo by: Jim Henderson via Wikipedia

Rochester, Buffalo, Syracuse and all of western New York are in the Fourth Department of the Court, the full name of which is Supreme Court of the State of New York, Appellate Division, Fourth Judicial Department.

The Fourth Department (Appellate Court) is housed in the M. Dolores Denman Courthouse, 50 East Ave. in Rochester. This is a link to their official website.

This court has their own library. It is the only NY State appellate-level law library open to the public. Part of their library consist of “Records and Briefs.” Those are papers submitted to an appellate court that contain a chronicle of the case in the lower court (record), and the arguments made to the appellate court (briefs). They are sometimes called “record on appeal” or “cases & points.” Some of that collection is available on paper and some on microform.

If you think that there is a court case that got appealed and you want to see the “Records and Briefs” for, you can contact the library via mail or email via the links on this page.

• Part 1 of this series is about Town and Village Justice Courts.
• Part 2 of the series is about Rochester City Court.
• Part 3 if the series is about a couple of substitutes for missing Rochester City Court records.
• Part 4 of the series shows Court records in the Monroe County Clerk’s Office.
• Part 5 of the series is about trying to find a couple of cases in the Clerk’s Office.
• Part 6 of the series is about some early court records and what is available on FamilySearch.

I am not a lawyer nor have any legal training. If you see any mistakes in this or any of the the earlier parts, either post a comment or send me an email at: dickhalsey@gmail.com and I’ll make appropriate changes.