Every so often, I get a prospective appellant who is convinced that filing his notice of appeal will intimidate his adversary, prompting him to “come to the table” to hammer out a deal. Good luck with that. It’s not that cases cannot settle on appeal. It’s that most of the time, the mere act of appealing or filing a writ petition does not generate much leverage because the odds are inherently against the success of the appeal. Consider that the reversal rate on appeals generally hovers between 20% and 25%. Would you be intimidated by those odds? That said, cases do settle on appeal, and some factors in a given…