Judge Sippel in the Eastern District of Missouri issued an order recently (following remand) finding that a configuration issue which results in non-receipt of an email notice of an order does not warrant reopening the time to file an appeal.  (Access Judge Sippel's order in pdf here.)

To me, it's clear that PACER (the federal courts' electronic records system) and e-filing are one of three things that have fundamentally changed the legal practice over the past five or so years.  (The other two I would add to that list are the .pdf file format and email.  I guess they are all related.)  Federal courts' e-filing system (CM/ECF) requires parties to e-file documents (in .pdf format).  What this means is that (1) documents can be filed electronically from anywhere, (2) in the majority of circumstances the other side does not have to be provided a paper copy of the filing.  This makes court filings significantly easier, cheaper, and something you can do while you are not in the office.

That said, PACER has not been a boon for all people.  Consider the case of the plaintiffs in American Boat Company, Inc. v. Unknown Sunken Barge, et al. (E.D. Mo/1:01 CV 00021 RWS).  These poor folks where fighting against the government trying to get (or get back, or get something from) an "unknown sunken barge," "the unknown owner of the unknown sunken barge," and the "unknown tower of the unknown sunken barge."  The US brought a motion for summary judgment which the court granted.  Plaintiffs filed a motion for reconsideration which the court denied.  Plaintiffs failed to timely file their notice of appeal.  Plaintiffs argued that they had not received the electronic notice of the court's orders, and filed a motion to "reopen time" to file a timely notice of appeal.  This required a showing (among other things) that they had not received a copy of the orders in question.  (The court had initially denied plaintiffs' motion but on appeal the eight circuit remanded (American Boat Company L.L.C., et al. v. Unknown Sunken Barge, 418 F.3d 910 (8th Cir. 2005)), finding that plaintiffs had made a sufficient showing to be entitled to an evidentiary hearing and put on evidence to rebut the presumption of delivery (of the orders).  Judge Sippel's order follows the evidentiary hearing.)

Ultimately Judge Sippel denies relief, finding that plaintiffs failed to rebut the presumption of delivery and receipt of the electronic notices in question. 

The order is well worth a read.  Among other things, you see that there are lawyers out there who (as of 2003) did "not personally use any computers in [their] law practice and [did not] check [their own] emails."  It's crazy to me to think that someone could actually function without checking their own emails, but I would guess there are still many people out there who are in this mode.  The order also focuses on whether the email in question was transmitted to the law firm's ISP server.  At that point the law firm had access to the message, but the fact that it possibly configured its email system to delete the messages from the ISP server when the mail was checked from a particular computer does not entitle plaintiffs to reopen the time for filing the appeal. 

It's unclear exactly what happened here, but the court accepted the explanation offered by expert for the defendants:


Ultimately, a cautionary tale that speaks to the importance of having adequate systems in place to ensure receipt of all court orders which are sent via email. 

It's easy to think that only law firms with unsophisticated email systems will run into these issues.  That would be foolish thinking.  (I mean if blackberry can have outages then no system is infallible.)  A good recommendation here is to periodically check the PACER entries for all cases, or maybe put together a feathers-like system which does so.