Following up on its prior order and as I had indicated in my prior blog post (Michigan Supreme Court Suspends All Case Filing Deadlines), the Court has now issued a clarifying order “tolling” filing deadlines for jurisdictional appeals; the time for filing a Claim of Appeal and Application for Leave to Appeal in the Supreme Court are jurisdictional – the Court will not recognize the filing if it is not filed within the time limit due date as specified in the Michigan Court Rules. A “late appeal” may be filed in the Court of Appeals, but the appeal is no longer one of right, but rather may be heard at the discretion of the Court.
For Supreme Court applications – late applications are not accepted.
The new order, AO 2020-4, effectively tolls the period of filing during the period of the Governor’s declared state of emergency (including any extensions) and it gives filers the same number of days to file upon expiration of the period of emergency as they had to file when the period commenced on March 24. It seems this particular aspect of the order was designed to avoid a large filing influx on the day after expiration of the filing period, which makes sense as the Courts would be flooded with appeals and applications on a single day.
This is an effective solution. Michigan Supreme Court is really proactive and handling this crisis extremely well! Well done!
Amicus Curious 