Although Notices Of Appeal Are Construed Liberally, The Order Under Appeal Still Must Be Specified With Some Precision.
Marriage of Schoenfeld, Case No. B281835 (2d Dist., Div. 7 June 18, 2018) (unpublished) is a reminder to appellants that some precision must be made in both the notice of appeal and the appellate civil information statement in order to demonstrate that a particular order is truly the subject of review. (For litigants unaware of this last requirement, a civil information statement must be filed with California appellate courts within 15 days of notification by the clerk about the appeal being filed. It requests pointed questions about the orders being appealed from, their dates, and the bases for the appeal.)
In this one, the litigant did not specify that it was appealing from a pendente lite fee order, although such an order is appealable. (In re Marriage of Tharp, 188 Cal.App.4th 1295, 1311 (2010).) Appellant compounded his problems by not mentioning the fee order in the civil information statement filed with the Court of Appeal. The result was that the appellate court dismissed the appeal, given that appellant did not specify he was challenging the fee order.