In the first New York
appellate decision to rule on the issue, the
Appellate Division, Second Department held in its February 28, 2018
opinion in Spencer v. Spencer, that violations of matrimonial action «Automatic Orders» can be grounds for a finding of
civil contempt, but an application for that relief must be made before the entry of the judgment of divorce.
So far, only three published studies have analyzed the association between brief readability and case outcome, 50 and no studies have analyzed that association in the trial courts, where most lawyers practice.51 Long and Christensen sampled 882
appellate briefs from the Supreme Court, federal
appellate courts, and state supreme courts.52 Their dependent variable was the outcome of the appeal (affirmed or reversed), while their independent variable was readability measured by the Flesch Reading Ease score as calculated by Microsoft Word.53 For federal
appellate and state supreme court briefs, the researchers coded control variables for federal or state court, standard of review, presence of a dissenting
opinion, and readability of the
opinion deciding the appeal.54 For United States Supreme Court briefs, the researchers coded control variables for constitutional issue, criminal or
civil case, presence of a dissenting
opinion, and
opinion readability.55 They found no statistically significant correlation between readability and outcome in the briefs in their study.56