The jury announced their verdict and the judge has already ruled in favor of your ex-business partner. He will get your entire business. The business that you worked hard for.
You felt that the decision was clearly on wrong, so you decided to file an appeal.
But it doesn’t end there. In order to stop your ex-business partner from getting the business, you need to put a stop to it by posting an appeal bond. If not, the court judgment will be enforced in a manner of days or weeks.
Here are a few things that you didn’t know about Appeal Bonds.
Appeal bonds generally require full collateral
Appeal bonds are risky and tend to need to be fully collateralized. However, there are exceptions.
If the appeal becomes successful, then no action will be taken against the bond. If the opposite happens, the bond will remain in effect until judgment, other costs and interests have been settled.
The court will discharge the bond if and only if all the obligations of the applicant have been fulfilled.
An appeal bond’s amount can be reduced
But the reduction of the bond amount is not up to the appellant (person who files for an appeal), the appellee (the appeal’s respondent), or the surety (appeal surety bond provider).
It is only the federal court that has the sole discretion of reducing a bond amount. If the court believes that it would not be practical for the appellant to post a bond amount that is equal to the total judgment, the federal court will reduce it.
Appeal bond amount varies per jurisdiction
Not all appeal surety bond amounts are the same. Since bond amounts are governed mostly by statutes, it is only natural that they vary per state.
Some states have higher bond amount requirements while others have lower bond amount requirements for a similar case.
For example, small businesses (less than 50 employees) in Hawaii are required to post up $1,000,000 for a stay of execution, whereas in Wyoming, the requirement is $2,000,000.
In recent years, many states have reformed their statutes by putting a cap on the required bond amount.
The State of Georgia, for one, capped the appeal bond amount to $25,000,000. In Ohio, the maximum bond amount for all damages is $50,000,000.
An appeal bond should be posted in a timely manner
Keep in mind that the losing party can only make an appeal and post a bond on an appealable court judgment if it’s done in a timely manner.
What is considered a timely manner? When a court decision is made, there is only a short window period before the judgment is given to the winning party.
The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure states a 14-day automatic stay before a judgment is executed. A stay of execution is, however, not automatically granted when an appeal is filed.
The deadline to file an appeal will still depend on the case. Regardless, the posting of the bond must be done once an appeal is filed or right after it has been filed, otherwise, the appeal may be dismissed.
An appeal bond is not exactly a supersedeas bond
The most commonly used umbrella term for both is “appeal bond”. However, an appeal bond and a supersedeas bond have different functions.
While it’s true that both are judicial bonds and that they are both used for an appeal, they are technically distinct.
An appeal bond covers the appellant’s (the party who appeals) court costs during the entire appeal according to the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure. Some of the costs are listed below:
- Reporter’s transcript
- Preparation and transmission of record
- Notice of Appeal filing fee
A supersedeas bond, on the other hand, is posted in order to obtain a stay of execution, also known as the writ of supersedeas.
The purpose of a supersedeas bond is to ensure that the successful party will be able to collect his or her winnings after the appeal is over.
An appeal can still be filed without a supersedeas bond. The downside to this is that the judgment will be given to the appellee (respondent to the appeal) since there’s no stay of execution.
If the appellant wins the appeal, he or she will have a harder time recovering the assets that were already awarded by the court to the appellee.
Do you need further information about an appeal surety bond? Talk to us via this toll-free number: 800-333-7800.
