IN RE: PETITION BY PERREIRA (FAMILY)

Key holdings

Practitioner summary

The court dismissed sua sponte for want of appellate jurisdiction after screening the notice of appeal. Two independent grounds supported dismissal. First, the order on appeal was a minute order. Citing Division of Child & Family Services v. Eighth Judicial District Court, 120 Nev. 445, 454, 92 P.3d 1239, 1245 (2004), the court reiterated that "[d]ispositional court orders that are not administrative in nature, but deal with the procedural posture or merits of the underlying controversy, must be written, signed, and filed before they become effective." Second, even assuming the directives in the minute order were effective, no statute or court rule authorizes an appeal from a district court order rescheduling a calendar call and consolidating it with a hearing on a motion for jury trial. The court invoked the foundational limitation articulated in Brown v. MHC Stagecoach, LLC, 129 Nev. 343, 345, 301 P.3d 850, 851 (2013), that the court "may only consider appeals authorized by statute or court rule."

In plain language

Eric Perreira tried to appeal a short scheduling decision the family court made - a "minute order" (a brief docket-entry note from the judge) that moved a calendar call to a new date and combined it with a hearing on a motion for a jury trial. He filed his appeal himself, without a lawyer. The Nevada Supreme Court did not reach the merits of any underlying family-law dispute. Instead, it concluded it had no power to hear the appeal at all. Two reasons drove that conclusion. First, under Nevada law, a minute order generally is not effective as a court order unless it is written, signed, and filed - and a minute order that has not crossed that threshold is not something an appellate court can review. Second, even treating the directives in the minute order as effective, no Nevada statute or court rule allows a party to appeal a decision that merely reschedules a calendar call or consolidates it with another hearing. Because Nevada appellate courts can hear only those appeals that some statute or rule expressly authorizes, the court dismissed the appeal for lack of jurisdiction.