Companion case

The term companion cases refers to a group of two or more cases which are consolidated by a appellate court while on appeal and are decided together because they concern one or more common legal issues. Depending upon the facts of each case, the appellate court may be able to achieve a final resolution of all such cases (for example, by affirming summary judgment in all of them), or may have to remand one or more of them for further proceedings (such as a trial). Usually one of the companion cases comes first on the case caption and becomes the title of the consolidated opinion that resolves the entire group of cases.

Appellate courts do not always have to consolidate cases in order to resolve several pending cases that present the same common legal issue. A related method is to "grant and hold," meaning that while a "lead" case presenting an increasingly common issue is being briefed and argued, all other similar cases that come into the same appellate court are granted review but then are put on hold pending the outcome of the lead case. Once the lead case is decided, the other cases are promptly remanded to the lower courts from where they originated, with directions to resolve them in light of the opinion issued in the lead case.

In some instances, companion cases with similar, but not identical, fact patterns are decided with different outcomes, allowing the court to establish fine dividing lines between outcomes revolving on the specific differences in the facts of each case.