In Walsh v. IKON Office Solutions, Inc., no. A113172 (March 1, 2007), the Court of Appeal (First Appellate District, Division Five) did not have to decide whether an order partially decertifying a class was an appealable order because the appellant had carefully filed timely notices of appeal from not only that order, but also the final and modified final judgments:
In the end, we need not decide whether the decertification order itself was an appealable order, since Walsh and Miller not only filed a notice of appeal from that order, but also filed a notice of appeal from the final judgment. If in fact the decertification order was immediately appealable, appellants’ notice of appeal from that order was timely. If the decertification order was not immediately appealable, and an appeal could be taken only from the subsequent judgment, appellants filed a protective notice of appeal from the judgment on September 5, 2006. (A modified judgment was entered in August 2006; appellants filed a timely notice of appeal from the modified judgment on October 16, 2006.) Therefore, whether the decertification order was immediately appealable or not, appellants have preserved their right of review and this court has jurisdiction. Because the issues raised by appellants have been fully briefed by the parties in this appeal, and the appeal from the judgment (appeal No. A115362) is only in its early stages, we proceed to address appellants’ contentions at this time in the interest of judicial efficiency.
Slip op. at 8 (footnote omitted). Filing the earlier notice of appeal also achieved the goal of obtaining faster appellate review (a desirable result even though the appeal ultimately failed).
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