A nice question of authority concerns whether the Court can accept a petition for rehearing filed after the twenty-five-day deadline specified in its rules.
The Supreme Court's power to grant rehearing out of time can have striking results vis-a-vis finality.
Equality plays an important but complicated role in the rehearing context.
What would a defensible regime of rehearing look like, and does the Supreme Court currently have one?
As Figure 1 shows, there are three different types of rehearing GVRs that can result: (1) those cases in which certiorari is denied--and finality attaches--before the grant of certiorari in the plenary case (what I call "resurrection" cases, because the grant of rehearing saves a case that to all appearances was over), (2) those cases in which certiorari was denied after the grant of certiorari in the plenary case ("missed holds," because these could and perhaps should have been held pending the plenary decision), and (3) those cases in which certiorari is denied after the issuance of a decision on the merits in the plenary case ("missed GVRs," because these could and perhaps should have been GVR'd rather than denied).
The Appendix presents a list of rehearing GVRs from 1965 to present, classified according to the above criteria.
The reasoning behind the appellate court's decision granting the motion for rehearing is often not fully explained in the opinion.
For example, a rehearing may be granted when there has been an intervening change in the law.
A rehearing may also be granted when an opinion makes clear that key evidence that was considered by the trial court was omitted from the record on appeal.
4th DCA 1996), in which the appellate court acknowledged that a certain document would have changed its decision, but declined to grant rehearing on that basis since the document was not presented as evidence in the trial court.
Rehearing will be granted rarely and only when the limited grounds set forth by the rule are presented and established.
The appellate courts will not hesitate to impose sanctions for filing motions for rehearing that do not comport with the requirements of Rule 9.
