This week, we’re wrapping up our review of the Court of Appeal’s dockets over the past twenty years, tracking the declines in the court’s docket.

The steepest decline across the eleven years occurred in the Third District, where new notices of appeal declined by 27.43%.  Next was the Sixth District, which declined by 24.37%.  Dockets at the Fourth District declined by 22.42%.  First District new notices of appeal were down 21.6%.  New notices of appeal were down 13.44% in the Fifth District.  The smallest decline was in the largest district, the Second, where new notices of appeal were down only 8.52%.

There were 1947 new notices of appeal filed in the Third District in 2011.  New filings were up to 2047 in 2015 before falling to 1701 in 2018, 1620 in 2020 and 1413 last year.  There were 825 new notices of appeal filed in the Sixth District in 2011.  This increased to 991 by 2014 before declining to 744 in 2019 and only 624 in 2021.  There were 4199 new notices of appeal in the Fourth District in 2011.  New filings were up to 4470 by 2015 before falling to 3884 in 2019 and 3258 in 2021.  There were 1154 new notices of appeal filed in the Fifth District.  That increased to 1306 by 2016.  New filings between 2017 and 2020 were very close to the 2011 level, but it then fell to only 999 by 2021.  There were 2041 new notices of appeal filed in the First District in 2011.   That increased to 2180 by 2015.  New filings declined to 1855 in 2020.  There were 1601 new notices of appeal filed in 2021.

Next time, we’ll be looking at the data for new original proceedings over the same eleven-year period.

Image courtesy of Flickr by G. Lamar (no changes).