It's been over a month since I perfected my appeal and the record hasn't reached the Court of Appeals — what can I do?

A thirty-day benchmark

Rule 44 anticipates that the record does not always move promptly from the trial court to the Court of Appeals on its own. Section 3 sets a benchmark: if the original record or the record on appeal is not transmitted to the Court of Appeals within thirty days after the perfection of the appeal, a remedy becomes available to the parties.

Either party can push for transmittal

The remedy is not limited to the appellant who is presumably eager to move the case forward. Either party may file a motion with the trial court, with notice to the other, for the transmittal of such record or record on appeal. An appellee delayed by a stalled record has the same standing to press for movement, since the thirty-day benchmark protects the pace of the appeal itself, not just one side's interest in it.

Where the motion is filed

Notably, the motion goes to the trial court, not the Court of Appeals — because the trial court is the one holding the record and responsible for sending it up. Filing this motion with notice to the adverse party creates a paper trail showing the delay and the effort to resolve it, which can matter if questions about diligence come up later in the appeal.

What the motion should establish

Because Section 3 is framed around the thirty-day period after perfection of the appeal, a party filing this motion should be prepared to show when the appeal was perfected and that the thirty days have run without transmittal. Attaching whatever record exists of the appeal's perfection, and giving proper notice to the other party as the rule requires, helps the trial court act on the motion without needing to independently reconstruct the case's procedural history first.

What Section 3 does not do

Section 3 gives the parties a motion to press for transmittal; it does not itself penalize the clerk of court or the trial court for the delay, and it does not automatically extend or shorten any other deadline in the case just because the thirty days have passed. The remedy binds the trial court to act on a properly noticed motion, but nothing in the text requires the record to have moved by any particular date afterward — it simply opens the door for the parties to ask. Where the record still does not move even after such a motion, a party is left to pursue whatever further relief the Rules of Court allow for a tribunal's failure to act, rather than any remedy built into Section 3 itself.

Related provisions

• Rule 44, Section 3 — Order of transmittal of record
• Rule 44, Section 4 — Docketing of case
• Rule 44, Section 5 — Completion of record