Short answer. Yes — through a petition for relief. Rule 38, Section 2 provides that when a party has been prevented from taking an appeal by fraud, accident, mistake, or excusable negligence, he may file a petition in the same court and in the same case praying that the appeal be given due course.
What the law says
by fraud, accident, mistake, or excusable negligence, has been prevented from taking an appeal, he may file a petition in such court and in the same case praying that the appeal be given due course
Rule 38, Section 2 — Petition for relief from denial of appeal. Read the full provision →
A safety valve for a lost appeal
Missing the appeal period is ordinarily the end: the judgment becomes final and the right to appeal is gone. Rule 38, Section 2 is the narrow escape for a party who did not simply miss the deadline but has been prevented from taking an appeal. The remedy stays home — the petition is filed in such court and in the same case, not in a higher court and not as a new action — and what it asks is specific: that the appeal be given due course, restoring the review the party was blocked from seeking.
The four grounds
Only four causes qualify: fraud, accident, mistake, or excusable negligence. Fraud points at deception — typically the other side's — that kept the party from appealing. Accident covers events outside anyone's control. Mistake is an error made in genuine, reasonable misapprehension. And negligence counts only when excusable — the adjective is the gatekeeper. Carelessness that any prudent litigant would have avoided does not become a ground merely by being called an accident or a mistake; the four words describe reasons a diligent party still lost its appeal, not descriptions of ordinary neglect.
What 'prevented' means
The other operative word is prevented. The section helps the party who would have appealed and was stopped — not the party who weighed the options and let the period lapse, and not the one whose change of heart arrived after finality. That means causation is the heart of the petition: what exactly happened, when the party learned of the judgment, and how the fraud, accident, mistake or excusable negligence stood between the party and a timely appeal. A petition that cannot draw that line is a complaint about the outcome, not a case for relief.
Treat it as an emergency
Petitions for relief live under strict, short time limits set by the same Rule, so the moment you discover a judgment you were prevented from appealing, the clock is already running. Preserve everything that proves the story: the date and manner you learned of the judgment, the correspondence or events that blocked the appeal, and any records fixing the timeline. Then get the papers to a lawyer at once — the remedy exists, but it rewards speed and sworn, specific facts, never generalities.