Summary judgment allows a litigant to ask the court to find that no “genuine issues of material fact” exist regarding some or all of the claims in the case, and that they are therefore entitled to “judgment as a matter of law” on those claims. A defendant may use summary judgment to have some or all of the plaintiff’s causes of action dismissed, while a plaintiff might move for summary judgment to obtain a favorable ruling on their claims.
In either case, the party that does not prevail might want to appeal the decision. The Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure (FRAP) establish the steps for filing an appeal in a federal Circuit Court of Appeals, with some help from the U.S. Code, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP), and caselaw.
