Quote:
Originally Posted by afv011
IANAL either, but what about cases that are reopened when new evidence surfaces?
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That's not technically an appeal (although, as a practical matter you might as well consider it as such). The big restriction on these kind of cases is that the new evidence needs to be "newly discovered evidence," which means evidence that wasn't reasonably available at the time of trial. This is a pretty high hurdle to hit in civil cases because it's hard to show that the evidence wasn't reasonably available.
(Most of the cases you hear about involving newly discovered evidence are criminal cases involving DNA - DNA testing may lead to evidence that genuinely was not available at the time of the trial.)