When must the cross-appeal appellee serve and file its principal and response brief?

Verify the actual Rule 28.1 appellee role.

Identify service of the appellant’s principal brief.

Establish service method and actual delivery facts.

Prepare the one combined principal and response brief and read actual directions.

1. Identify the actual procedure and required actor.
2. Read the controlling event, service or stay evidence.
3. Apply applicable additions, coupled limits and actual directions.
4. Complete the required acts and preserve proof.

First compute the base period under FRAP 26(a), excluding the service day and counting every calendar day, with final-day rollover. When the paper was neither served electronically nor delivered on the date stated in the proof of service, Rule 26(c) adds three days after that base otherwise expires. Apply final-day rollover to the added period. The isolated preset does not calculate that addition.

Rule 26(a)(6) includes the listed federal holidays and days declared holidays by the President or Congress. For periods after an event, it also includes holidays declared by the state of the district court that rendered the challenged judgment or order, or the circuit clerk’s principal office. Establish the actual applicable calendar and inaccessibility. The national preset does not infer additional state holidays or granted relief.

The isolated thirty-day cross-appeal appellee preset omits the possible Rule 26(c) addition. No computed date or paid calculation record is published.

Combined brief

Rule 28.1(c)(2) requires the appellee’s principal brief in the cross-appeal and response to the principal appeal in the same brief.

Actual role

Rule 28.1(b) role designations can be modified by agreement or court order. Establish the actual appellee before identifying this stage.

Service-based period

The thirty days start after service of the appellant’s principal brief. Rule 26(c) may add days based on actual service and delivery conditions.

Both acts

Rule 28.1(f) requires the combined brief to be served and filed, not merely prepared.

• This guide does not read local rules or orders, infer service or delivery, determine an appeal’s merits or grant relief.
• Confirm actual briefing roles, separate service and current circuit requirements before using a national default.

• Establish the designated appellee role.
• Verify actual appellant-principal-brief service.
• Review delivery facts and any Rule 26(c) addition.
• Prepare the one combined principal and response brief.
• Serve and file it under actual directions and preserve proof.
• Court-of-appeals electronic filing ends at midnight in the circuit clerk’s principal-office time zone under Rule 26(a)(4)(B), unless a different applicable time controls. Ordinary paper filing requires clerk receipt by scheduled closure. Rule 25(a)(2)(A)(ii) separately permits timely mailing or qualifying dispatch of a brief or appendix. Motions do not automatically receive that exception. Confirm actual local instructions, permitted channels and separate service proof.