Most Buffalo personal injury lawsuits are heard in the Supreme Court of Erie County. Each county in New York State has its own Supreme Court. Occasionally, a personal injury attorney may wish to appeal an adverse decision made by the judge at the Supreme Court level to a higher court.
For Western New York, the next “step up” from the Supreme Court level is the Appellate Division for the Fourth Department. It is one of four appellate courts in New York State. The appellate courts’ primary purpose is to hear appeals from the decisions of lower courts — they do not conduct trials like the lower courts do. As a result, they rarely hear new issues or are presented with new evidence. Instead, when hearing an appeal, they look at the evidence presented to the lower court and that court’s rationale for making its decision. They then determine if the lower court’s decision complied with New York State law.
In rare cases, an appeal may be taken to the New York State Court of Appeals, which is the highest court in the state. This usually occurs only after a case has been heard at the appellate division level. The Court of Appeals can, and frequently does, refuse to hear a case that is being appealed. The cases the Court of Appeals does choose to hear typically involve issues about which the lower courts have reached differing conclusions or that have proven particularly divisive. The decision of the Court of Appeals on how a particular issue will be handled is binding on all lower courts.
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