May It Please the Court: Appeals as of Right and Discretionary Review Across Federal and State Systems

Stan Panikowski, Partner and Co-Chair, Appellate Advocacy Practice | DLA Piper LLP (US)

Stan Panikowski is a Partner and Co-Chair of the Appellate Advocacy practice at DLA Piper in San Diego, where he is an appellate and trial litigator handling intellectual property, antitrust, and other complex business disputes, including class actions. A former law clerk to Justice Sandra Day O’Connor of the Supreme Court of the United States, he has had significant roles in more than 100 appeals — including more than 50 before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit — and has

successfully represented clients before the Federal Circuit, the Ninth Circuit, the California Supreme Court, the California Court of Appeal, federal district courts, and the International Trade Commission. He also regularly represents clients at the certiorari stage in the U.S. Supreme Court, giving him a first-hand command of both the appeals that litigants take as of right and the discretionary review that governs access to the nation’s and California’s highest courts.

• Education & Credentials

Mr. Panikowski earned his J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law, where he was elected to the Order of the Coif and served on the Virginia Law Review. A Rhodes Scholar, he earned a B.A. in Philosophy, Politics and Economics with First Class Honors from the University of Oxford, and he received his B.A. and M.A., summa cum laude, from Emory University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Following law school, he clerked for the Honorable Sandra Day O’Connor of the Supreme Court of the United States and the Honorable J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. He is admitted in California and before the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Federal, Ninth, Seventh, and District of Columbia Circuits, the U.S. District Courts for the Northern and Central Districts of California, and the Supreme Court of California.

• Recognition & Leadership

Mr. Panikowski has been named to The Best Lawyers in America every year since 2011 and was named Intellectual Property Attorney of the Year by Super Lawyers for San Diego. The Legal 500 United States has recommended him for Patent Litigation, San Diego Metropolitan Magazine selected him as one of its “40 Under 40” honorees, recognizing him as “one of the brightest and most enterprising young people in San Diego County,” and the San Diego Daily Transcript named him one of the region’s top young attorneys. He is a Past President of the San Diego Chapter of the Federal Bar Association and continues to serve on its Advisory Board, and he has served as a Lawyer Representative to the Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference for the Southern District of California.

• Professional Involvement

Mr. Panikowski is a speaker and writer on patent and appellate litigation and has served as an Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of San Diego School of Law, teaching patent litigation and constitutional law. He has chaired the Merit Selection Panel for the appointment and reappointment of magistrate judges in the Southern District of California, served on that court’s Local Rules Committee, and served on the San Diego County Bar Association Ethics Committee. He is a Past President of the Board of Directors of the Legal Aid Society of San Diego, an alumnus of the Louis M. Welsh American Inn of Court, and a former board member of the Association of American Rhodes Scholars. His pro bono work includes representing veterans organizations as amici before the Federal Circuit and the U.S. Supreme Court, including a successful amicus brief in the Federal Circuit’s landmark en banc decision in Procopio v. Wilkie.

• Experience

Mr. Panikowski’s appellate record spans patent, trademark, copyright, antitrust, class action, False Claims Act, labor, bankruptcy, and sovereign-immunity issues. His notable results include the reversal of summary judgment on copyright fair use in Dr. Seuss Enterprises v. ComicMix, 983 F.3d 443 (9th Cir. 2020); the full reversal of a contempt order in International Rectifier Corp. v. Samsung Electronics Co., 361 F.3d 1155 (Fed. Cir. 2004); the reversal of a Patent Trial and Appeal Board decision in Sophos Ltd. v. Iancu (Fed. Cir. 2018); the reversal of a sovereign-immunity ruling for the Democratic Republic of Congo in FG Hemisphere Associates v. Unocal (9th Cir. 2014); and a unanimous affirmance from the California Supreme Court in Grosset v. Wenaas (2008). In Xitronix v. KLA Corporation (Fed. Cir. 2019), he secured affirmance of summary judgment and then defeated two petitions for certiorari — experience on both sides of the discretionary-review line that makes him uniquely positioned to explain how practitioners preserve, perfect, and defend appellate rights from the trial court through the U.S. Supreme Court.

Peter Karanjia, Partner and Chair, Administrative Law Appellate Practice | DLA Piper LLP (US)

Peter Karanjia is a Partner at DLA Piper in New York and Washington, D.C., where he chairs the firm’s Administrative Law Appellate practice. Drawing on his government service as Deputy General Counsel of the Federal Communications Commission (2010–2013) and Special Counsel to the Solicitor General of New York (2007–2010), he focuses on appellate, government-facing, and complex civil litigation. Chambers USA describes him as “widely regarded as one of the go-to folks for appellate work” and “a tremendous intellect with strong litigation knowledge.” Admitted before the Supreme Court of the United States and every regional federal court of appeals, Mr. Karanjia has obtained reversal of an adverse Eleventh Circuit decision in the U.S. Supreme Court and has filed amicus briefs on which the Court has expressly relied — giving him a commanding perspective on how cases reach, and are decided by, the nation’s highest court.

• Education & Credentials

Mr. Karanjia earned his B.A. in Law with First Class Honors from the University of Oxford, where he received Brasenose College Scholarships, a Distinction in First-Year Examinations, and the Slaughter & May Prize, and he later received his M.A. in Law from Oxford. He earned his LL.M. from Harvard Law School as a John F. Kennedy Scholar on a full scholarship. He is admitted in New York and the District of Columbia and before the Supreme Court of the United States; the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the D.C., First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Circuits; the New York Court of Appeals; the District of Columbia Court of Appeals; the U.S. Court of Federal Claims; and the U.S. District Courts for the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York and the District of Columbia.

• Recognition & Leadership

Law360 has named Mr. Karanjia an MVP of the Year four times for his “successes in high-stakes litigation.” He is ranked by Chambers USA (Telecom, Broadcast & Satellite) and recognized by The Legal 500 United States as a “leading partner” and “an expert appellate and civil litigator.” Lawdragon has named him among the “500 Leading Litigators in America” for appellate and complex commercial litigation, Washingtonian has named him a “Top Lawyer,” and he has been listed in The Best Lawyers in America for Media Law every year since 2019. He is an elected member of the American Law Institute and serves on — and is a past chair of — the national Board of Directors of the American Constitution Society.

• Professional Involvement

Mr. Karanjia regularly files amicus briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of members of Congress, bar associations, and government officials, including in Hawaii v. Trump (for more than 100 members of Congress), Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California, and PeñaRodriguez v. Colorado. He is the author of “Hard Cases and Tough Choices: A Response to Professors Sunstein and Vermeule” in the Harvard Law Review and co-author of “Why Now Might Be a Great Time to Sue the Government” in The Legal Intelligencer, as well as client analyses of the Supreme Court’s major separation-of-powers decisions. He has spoken on recent Supreme Court decisions for Strafford, the American Constitution Society’s Supreme Court Review, and the Federal Communications Bar Association, serves on Law360’s Telecommunications Advisory Board, and is frequently quoted by Law360 and Bloomberg Law on the Supreme Court and the administrative state.

• Experience

Mr. Karanjia obtained reversal of an adverse Eleventh Circuit decision in the U.S. Supreme Court in TMobile v. City of Roswell, and in FCC v. Consumers’ Research he represented former FCC Chairs and Commissioners as amici supporting the $9 billion Universal Service program — the Court cited and relied on his brief in upholding it. In NetChoice v. Moody, he obtained a preliminary injunction against Florida’s first-of-its-kind social media “deplatforming” statute, and the Supreme Court subsequently endorsed key aspects of the district court’s reasoning. He has litigated numerous direct petitions for review of agency orders in the D.C. and Eighth Circuits — including defending FCC approval of the $26 billion TMobile/Sprint merger in CWA v. FCC — and secured a Ninth Circuit victory in MetroPCS v. Picker that foreclosed a state proceeding seeking more than $200 million. He also defended a leading AI company in what appears to be the first defamation action based on the outputs of an AI chatbot, obtaining summary judgment — making him uniquely positioned to address appellate pathways from federal agencies, trial courts, and state courts alike.

Rachel A.H. Horton, Partner, Litigation, Arbitration and Investigations | DLA Piper LLP (US)

Rachel Horton is a Partner at DLA Piper in Philadelphia, where she represents pharmaceutical and medical device companies in multidistrict litigation and appeals throughout the United States. A high-energy litigator who regularly handles complex, high-stakes matters, she has presented oral arguments before federal Courts of Appeals, state and federal trial courts, and arbitration panels. Ms. Horton has deep experience drafting the dispositive motions — on preemption, standing, statutes of limitations, and causation — that shape the appellate record, and her teams have achieved victories that have led numerous plaintiffs to voluntarily dismiss their claims or appeals. Having clerked at both the federal trial and appellate levels, she brings an insider’s understanding of how appeals as of right and interlocutory, discretionary review are decided.

• Education & Credentials

Ms. Horton graduated first in her class, earning her J.D., summa cum laude, as Valedictorian from Drexel University’s law school. She also holds a Master of Bioethics (M.B.E.) from the University of Pennsylvania and an A.B. in Biology, magna cum laude with honors in Biology, from Bryn Mawr College. She clerked for the Honorable Legrome D. Davis of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and the Honorable Richard C. Wesley of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. During law school, she interned with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, assisting with Federal Tort Claims Act and False Claims Act litigation, and with the Honorable Louis H. Pollak of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. She is admitted in Pennsylvania and before the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Second, Third, Fifth, Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Circuits and the U.S. District Courts for the Eastern and Middle Districts of Pennsylvania.

• Recognition & Leadership

Ms. Horton received the 2025 Pennsylvania Lawyers on the Fast Track Award, which honors rising leaders of the Pennsylvania bar. She serves on the Board of Advisors of Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts, the statewide nonpartisan court-reform organization, and is a member of the Philadelphia Lawyers’ Club. Her appellate and mass-tort work has been covered extensively by Law360, and she has co-authored analysis for the ABA’s Mass Torts Litigation Newsletter and Law360.

• Professional Involvement

Ms. Horton is a frequent CLE faculty member, presenting on the Effective Use of Motions to Dismiss and Motions for Summary Judgment, the Admission and Exclusion of Unique Evidence under Pennsylvania Law, Summations and Jury Instructions in Pennsylvania Trials, Winning Mass Torts, Verdict Inflation in Product Liability Defense, and the Landscape for Strategic Litigation Against the Government. She maintains an active pro bono appellate practice, regularly handling court-appointed appeals in the Third Circuit, and is a past member of the Second Circuit’s Pro Bono Panel. Her pro bono appeals have produced precedential opinions, including Vurimindi v. U.S. Attorney General, 46 F.4th 134 (3d Cir. 2022); Northeastern Pennsylvania Freethought Society v. County of Lackawanna Transit System, 938 F.3d 424 (3d Cir. 2019); Tilija v. U.S. Attorney General, 930 F.3d 165 (3d Cir. 2019); and Paladino v. Newsome, 885 F.3d 203 (3d Cir. 2018).

• Experience

Ms. Horton serves as national counsel for Novo Nordisk in the GLP-1 receptor agonist MDLs and related state-court litigation, and has defended Sanofi in the Zantac MDL and related state proceedings involving thousands of cancer claims and third-party-payor, medical-monitoring, and economic-loss class actions. She worked with Delaware counsel to obtain an appellate victory on general causation in an interlocutory appeal before the Delaware Supreme Court, In re Zantac, 342 A.3d 1131 (Del. 2025). As appellate counsel for Sanofi in the Taxotere MDL, she has handled all appeals arising from the litigation, securing Fifth Circuit affirmances in Thibodeaux, 995 F.3d 384 (5th Cir. 2021), Kuykendall, 966 F.3d 351 (5th Cir. 2020), and Phillips, 994 F.3d 704 (5th Cir. 2021), and served as appellate counsel at two jury trials. She also obtained a Ninth Circuit affirmance of dismissal for a medical device company on personal-jurisdiction grounds. Before practicing law, she worked as a molecular biologist in a breast cancer research lab at the University of Pennsylvania, publishing in peer-reviewed scientific journals — making her uniquely positioned to address how MDL rulings, interlocutory appeals, and final-judgment appeals interact in both federal and state systems.

Marie Bussey-Garza, Of Counsel, Litigation, Arbitration and Investigations | DLA Piper LLP (US)

Marie Bussey-Garza is Of Counsel at DLA Piper in Philadelphia, where she maintains a nationwide practice focused on class actions, high-stakes government-facing litigation, and appellate advocacy. She has successfully represented clients in practice-changing appellate disputes with critical implications for a broad range of industries, and she has defended complex actions alleging deceptive business practices, consumer-protection violations, defamation, and related constitutional claims while pursuing affirmative statutory and constitutional challenges to state legislative action. Admitted before the Supreme Court of the United States and six federal circuits, Ms. Bussey-Garza is currently representing a former state judge in a First Amendment challenge seeking review by the U.S. Supreme Court — giving her direct, current experience with the certiorari process at the heart of discretionary review.

• Education & Credentials

Ms. Bussey-Garza earned her J.D., summa cum laude, from the Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law, where she served as Managing Editor of the Villanova Law Review: Tolle Lege, and she has served as President of the Villanova Law chapter of the Order of the Coif. She also holds a B.S. from California State University, Fresno, where she held the Bayer Agriculture Division Graduate Viticulture Assistantship, and a B.B.A., with highest honors, from the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin. Before joining DLA Piper, she interned for the Honorable Michael M. Baylson of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. She is admitted in Pennsylvania and Texas and before the Supreme Court of the United States; the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Third, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Circuits; the U.S. Court of International Trade; and the U.S. District Courts for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the Eastern and Western Districts of Texas, and the District of Columbia. She speaks Spanish.

• Recognition & Leadership

Ms. Bussey-Garza has been named a Super Lawyers Rising Star in Class Actions & Mass Torts every year from 2024 through 2026 and a 2026 Rising Star Lawyer by Scene in SA, and her work was recognized in The Litigation Daily’s “Litigator of the Week” runners-up and shout-outs in 2025. Her government-facing wins — including a multimillion-dollar fee award against the Federal Trade Commission and a constitutional challenge on behalf of a nonprofit health system — have been reported by Law360. She is a founding member and the Immediate Past President of the Villanova Law Women’s Network, the official alumnae network of Villanova Law, having served as its inaugural Vice President (2020–2022) and President (2022–2025), and she now co-chairs its Communications Committee.

• Professional Involvement

Ms. Bussey-Garza serves as DLA Piper’s liaison to the Retail Litigation Center. She is a frequent speaker and moderator on appellate and government-facing litigation, including moderating “Strategic Litigation Against the Government: When, Why, and How” and “Better Briefs: Setting Yourself up for Success,” and speaking at the RILA/RLC Spring 2026 Legal Meetings and on the mass-arbitration phenomenon. She is a recurring guest lecturer at Villanova’s Charles Widger School of Law on civil procedure, defending class actions, and client counseling, and has authored analysis on a court’s injunction of a Texas warning-label law on First Amendment grounds. She has served on the Board of Governors of SA Youth and maintains an active pro bono practice focused on civil rights actions.

• Experience

At the appellate level, Ms. Bussey-Garza developed the appellate strategy for a Fortune 500 life sciences company that ultimately led the opposing party to withdraw its action, and she successfully managed and resolved multiple appeals brought against a major pharmaceutical company by plaintiffs dismissed from a multidistrict litigation involving a critical lifesaving drug. She secured a total defense victory at trial and a multimillion-dollar fee award for a publisher falsely accused of deceptive sales practices by the Federal Trade Commission and the Pennsylvania Attorney General; successfully represented a large nonprofit health system in an affirmative constitutional challenge to a state law imposing a government take-over of nonprofit governance functions; and represents dozens of retailers and consumer-goods companies seeking refunds of tariffs unlawfully collected under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Drawing on a prior career as an entrepreneur and educator in information technology, winemaking, hospitality, healthcare, research, and higher education, she brings a business-minded perspective to deciding when — and how — to seek appellate review.

SESSION 1 – Appeal as of Right: Finality, Interlocutory Orders, and Perfecting the Appeal in Federal and State Court | Stan Panikowski, Rachel A.H. Horton, Marie Bussey-Garza & Peter Karanjia | 2:30pm – 3:30pm

The right to appeal is a creature of statute and rule, and it is narrower than many litigators assume. This session lays out the ground rules of appellate jurisdiction as a matter of right in the federal courts and the pitfalls to avoid: the final-judgment rule under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 and what “final” actually means; Rule 54(b) partial final judgments; the statutory exceptions in § 1292(a) allowing immediate appeal of certain orders concerning injunctions, receivership, and admiralty matters; the narrow “collateral order doctrine”; and special rules for appeals involving the Federal Arbitration Act. The panel then turns to the nuts and bolts of properly preserving an appeal: who may appeal, what the notice of appeal must include, which deadlines apply and when the clock starts (including tolling motions and extensions), and when a cross-appeal is required versus when an appellee may defend the judgment on alternative grounds.  Finally, the panel will highlight some contrasts with state court appellate practice in illustrative states (California, New York, and Pennsylvania).

BREAK | 3:30pm – 3:40pm

SESSION 2 – Discretionary Review: Certification, Rule 23(f), Rehearing and En Banc, Writs of Certiorari, and State Appellate Court Review | Stan Panikowski, Rachel A.H. Horton, Marie Bussey-Garza & Peter Karanjia | 3:40pm – 4:40pm

When no appeal lies as of right, the fight shifts to persuading a court that it should hear the case at all. This session covers the baseline requirements and the strategic considerations for seeking discretionary review in federal and state courts. On the federal side, the panel unpacks § 1292(b) certification, including its elements and the two-step district court and circuit court process; Rule 23(f) petitions to appeal classcertification rulings and the factors the circuits apply; and petitions for panel rehearing and rehearing en banc under the consolidated FRAP 40, including when a rehearing petition is worth filing and how it sets up Supreme Court review. The session then turns to certiorari: Supreme Court Rule 10 considerations, the 90-day deadline under Rule 13, identifying and framing a circuit split, and vehicle problems.