Your objective should always be to plan to appeal. Judges in appellate courts have worked years to get where they are and don't want to lose their positions or risk not being promoted further. Not all appellate judges are good, but many are as you will see in case law.

Lower court judges don't like to be appealed and many want to move up. Judicial complaints and BAR grievances look bad on their record AND it hits their insurance carriers because they are required to notify their carrier in case they get sued. Enough of these can cause an insurance carrier to drop them. Most people don't realize the power in something as simple as that.

But yes, they try to avoid precedent, so a strong enough initial complaint will either get the case dropped or sealed when it's something big like that.

Steve Emerson out of Florida won $38 million in his property tax case as well as free utilities for life. His case was sealed. He is very much left alone now because he knows the law so well.