If I miss one of the formal requirements for my petition for review to the Court of Appeals, like a missing certified copy or unpaid fee, will the whole petition get thrown out?

What counts as noncompliance

Section 3 covers the petitioner's failure to comply with any of the requirements set out in the preceding section, specifically the payment of the docket and other lawful fees, the deposit for costs, proof that the petition was served on the other party, and the required contents of, and documents accompanying, the petition itself. Each of these requirements traces back directly to what Section 2 already demands of a properly filed petition for review, so a petitioner cannot claim to be caught by surprise by any of them once the petition is actually filed with the court.

The consequence, and why the requirements are treated strictly

Any one of those failures is, by itself, sufficient ground for the Court of Appeals to dismiss the petition. Treating each requirement this strictly reinforces that the formalities set out in Section 2 are not optional details; each exists to give the appellate court a complete, verifiable petition to actually work with. Treating any single lapse as sufficient ground for dismissal reflects how central these formal requirements are to giving the Court of Appeals a workable petition it can act on without chasing down missing pieces. This strict, no-excuses approach is what gives the earlier list of requirements its practical teeth.

The takeaway for petitioners

Because any single one of several distinct requirements can trigger dismissal on its own, care in complying with every one of Section 2's formalities matters just as much to the survival of the petition as the substantive strength of the appeal itself. A petitioner with an otherwise strong case can still lose the opportunity to be heard on the merits simply by overlooking one of these formal requirements, which makes a careful pre-filing checklist as important to the outcome as the legal arguments themselves ultimately are. This ground for dismissal binds the petitioner only; it says nothing about deficiencies on the respondent's side, and a dismissal for noncompliance here does not, by that fact alone, resolve the merits of the underlying appeal one way or the other.

Related provisions

• Rule 42, Section 3 — Effect of failure to comply with requirements
• Rule 42, Section 2 — Form and contents
• Rule 42, Section 4 — Action on the petition