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Your Best Precedent Is Unpublished: Now What?

By Cameron W. Gilbert

Imagine counsel representing litigants before a court. An attorney for one party takes a position on the issue. The court responds that, in a previously filed pleading, counsel had taken the opposite position on behalf of his or her client. The attorney responds, “No, Your Honor, that was an 'unpublished' filing. Not only am I not bound by it, in this jurisdiction, you are not even permitted to bring that unpublished filing to my attention.”

The court would likely hold the attorney in contempt or sanction him or her for frivolous conduct. Yet, courts often do this to litigants and counsel by filing an overwhelming majority of their opinions ' including lengthy, important ones ' as unpublished decisions. These are not binding precedent and, in many jurisdictions, litigants and counsel are prohibited from even revealing the existence of these prior decisions to the court.

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