A few posts ago, I reported 81% as the share of “other civil appeals” in my sample that were affirmed or dismissed by the Third Circuit in FY 2013. See here. Because this percentage treats everything that is not an affirmance or a dismissal the same way, I thought I’d give some more detail on the Third Circuit’s judgments.

For FY 2013, I collected information on 642 Third Circuit appeals that fell within the “other civil appeal” category (i.e., they were not bankruptcy appeals or prisoner petitions). Of those 642 appeals, the Third Circuit:

Affirmed the district court’s judgment in 489 cases (or 76.17%);
Dismissed the appeal in 31 cases (or 4.83%);
Reversed the district court’s judgment in 36 cases (or 5.61%);
Reversed the district court’s judgment in part in 16 cases (or 2.49%);
Vacated the district court’s judgment in 41 cases (or 6.39%); and
Vacated the district court’s judgment in part in 29 cases (or 4.52%).

Reasons for the dismissals included a lack of jurisdiction (12 cases), the issues had become moot (8 cases), and failure to prosecute (or abandonment) (2 cases). I treated one denial of a petition for a writ of mandamus as a dismissal because the petitioner asked the Third Circuit to order the district court to reverse two interlocutory orders. The court dismissed 8 appeals under 28 U.S.C. § 1915 because the appellant’s challenge lacked an arguable basis in law.

If the dismissed appeals are removed from the total, the Third Circuit:

Affirmed the district court’s judgment in 80.03% of 611 cases;
Reversed the district court’s judgment in 5.89%;
Reversed the district court’s judgment in part in 2.62%;
Vacated the district court’s judgment in 6.71%; and
Vacated the district court’s judgment in part in 4.75%.