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What is an appeal as of right? Hi. Come on in. I’m Gerry Oginski, a New York medical
malpractice and personal injury trial lawyer practicing law here in the state of New York.
An appeal as of right means that the losing party of a lawsuit at the trial level has
an absolute right to go to the next higher court, known as the appellate division in
the state of New York. What does that mean? It means that when you present your argument,
you are not re-trying your case. Instead you are focusing on specific legal rulings that
were made during the course of trial. And now the appellate division – usually a panel
of four or five judges – will determine whether or not there were legal errors during
the course of your trial. And if they find that there were legal errors the court has
a number of different options available. They may find that there was something called “harmless
error” in which case they will not turnover the decision or the verdict below. The court
may find that yes in fact what occurred was wrong and should not have happened. As a result
of that you suffered the wrong outcome. So they may in fact make that decision and tell
you you now have to have the case tried all over again. They may decide hey this makes
absolutely no sense, we’re going to throw out the appeal and you’re done with it.
Or they may turn around and say, “You know what? We agree with what occurred below.”
Or they may turn around and say, “Hey you know what?” Let’s say an award was made
and compensation was awarded.They may decide that the compensation was not sufficient enough
and they may add to the award. It’s called an “additur”, that’s the legal term.
Or they may turn around and say, “No it was too much. We’re going to cut the award
down.” That’s called a “remittitur”. Those are fancy legal terms which basically
says we’re cutting the award or we’re adding to the award. And that’s what happens
when you hear the phrase “an appeal as of right”. By the way, if you found this information
helpful, what I want you to do is two things. I want you to press the “Like” button
below if you’re watching this on Facebook or YouTube, that way all of your friends can
get the benefit of the same exact information that you just got. And I want you to leave
comments below. I’ll be able to answer your questions from the comments section. And if
you have specific legal questions, what I want you to do is pick up the phone and call
me. I welcome your call and in fact I answer legal questions like yours every single day.
You can reach me at 516-487-8207 or by email at lawmed10@yahoo.com. I’m Gerry Oginski,
here in New York. Thanks for watching.