Generally, a rendered judgment is the final stage of trial, where a judge or a jury determines the rights and obligations of the parties and attributes fault to one of multiple parties. Right after a judgement has been rendered, it should be placed in a written order that enters the court’s filing system.

The losing party, following trial’s judgment, could file what we call post-trial motions, such as a motion for a new trial, motion to dismiss, motion for judgment acquittal, etc.

A rendered decision in a civil case also gives the parties the automatic right to appeal the trial’s court’s judgment by filing a notice of appeal presenting arguments if they believe that the court judgment has an error as a matter or law, which made the trial process unfair. Appeals must be based on specific grounds, such as:

• Legal Errors: In civil litigations, legal errors occur in case of misinterpretation or misapplication of the law. An example is Wilcox v. Hotelerama Associates, 619 So. 2d 444 (Fla. 3d DCA 1993), the dispute in this case was about worker’s compensation. Wilcox ended up getting the worker’s compensation, but the trial court’s ruling was appealed and the court granted writ of mandamus(reversal of trial).

• Procedural Errors: these errors include mistakes, irregularities or violations of procedural rules during civil trial proceedings. In 2012, in U-Haul International, Inc. v. Waldrip, 380 S.W.3d 118, the Texas Supreme Court reversed and rendered an $11.7 million award of exemplary damages, but left intact $21 million in compensatory damages. The key error cited by the Supreme Court was the trial court’s admission of evidence concerning U-Haul’s safety practices in Canada, little of which had to do with faulty parking brakes or transmissions. 

• Abuse of Discretion: It occurs when decisions are made in a manner that is arbitrary, unreasonable, or not based on any compelling evidence. An example is Cooper v. Takeda Pharmaceuticals America, Inc., 239 Cal. App. 4th 555 (2015), a case where the victim claims that a drug for type 2 diabetes he took from Takeda Pharmaceuticals America caused his bladder cancer. As a result, Taked was found liable (failure to warn, loss of consortium) by the jury. Now, the expert’s testimony was for some unknown reason excluded, so the California Court of Appeal found this exclusion to be an abuse of discretion, for reasons such as the misapplication of causation in toxic tort claims.

• Insufficient Evidence: In a defamation case, Brady v. Klentzman, 515 S.W.3d 878 (Tex. 2017), a journalist was sued by an individual for writing an article detailed “unruly and intoxicated”, it was then concluded that the journalist had acted with malice and awarded $50,000 in reputational damages and mental anguish, Following that, after analyzing the record, it was concluded that there was no sufficient or compelling evidence that the victim suffered from mental anguish or reputational damages. 

• Newly Discovered Evidence: This is the type of evidence that could change the outcome if available at the time of trial, which could be grounds for appealing judgments. In Wall St. Mortgage Bankers, Ltd. v. Rodgers (2017), in a foreclosure action, new evidence was discovered which resulted in demanding a new trial.

In contrast, the winning party could proceed to the judgement enforcement to give it effect if the losing party does not comply with the court’s order.

Finally, the resolution of post-trial motions and appeals by the parties, and the enforcement of the court’s order results in the official closure of the case.