In Massachusetts, for most civil and criminal appeals, appellate jurisdiction is established only by appellate rules from which broad exercise of appellate discretion is (a) wildly inconsistent, (b) contrary to this Court's precedents, and (c) procedurally and substantively unconstitutional. The Appeals Court Panel ("ACP") dismissed this appeal as untimely fourteen months after the Petitioner ("Pet.") filed her docketing statement and after allowing a non-party to act as the sole appellee. This non-party signed all ACP documents as "Jeffrey M. Siegel" in a pro se capacity. Mr. Siegel is the Respondent's ("Resp.") trial court attorney who is financing the Resp.'s litigation costs. The ACP ordered Pet. to pay Mr. Siegel's pro se legal fees in the amount of $30,044 as punishment for appealing "frivolously".

1. Whether the $30,044 punishment is contrary to:
(a) the Fourteenth, First, and Sixth Amendments,
(b) Taggart v. Lorenzen et al.; 189 S.Ct. 1795 (2019), (requires objective, "no fair ground of doubt" standard for civil contempt),
(c) Kimble v. Marvel Entertainment, LLC, 576 U.S. 446 (2015), regarding the right of litigants to be able to rely upon stare decisis, and/or
(d) Lackey v. Stinney et al. (23-621, 2/25/2025) (held that there is no prevailing party because no court conclusively resolved the parties' claims by granting enduring judicial relief on the merits that materially altered the legal relationship between the parties and also held that under the " 'American Rule,' a prevailing litigant is ordinarily not entitled to collect attorneys' fees from the loser absent express statutory authorization. See Alyeska Pipeline Service Co. v. Wilderness Society, 421 U.S. 240, 249.").

Whether a state appellate court's dismissal of an appeal as untimely and imposition of sanctions against a pro se litigant violates the Fourteenth, First, and Sixth Amendments and conflicts with Supreme Court precedent regarding prevailing party status, attorneys' fees awards, and the standard for civil contempt sanctions