Opinion ID: 757675
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: We must disregard harmless error.

Text: 90 The majority opinion contradicts itself on harmless error. First it says that in Klingele we held that a failure to give adequate notice was reversible error, without engaging in harmless error analysis.... We continue to believe that harmless error review is inappropriate in most cases. That means no affirmances, when the Klingele form has not been sent out, based on harmless error. The majority opinion says harmless error analysis is an impossible task. Then the majority opinion says we can affirm despite failure to send a Klingele form in the unusual case where the harmlessness of the failure to give the required notice may be established on the record or by judicial notice. But that means the analysis of harmless error in Klingele was not correct, and harmless error review is not an impossible task. 91 The majority suggests slipping the camel through the needle's eye with the terms unusual, exceptional, and objective. Evidently we are to affirm despite failure of the district court or counsel to send the pro se a Klingele form in the unusual and exceptional case where objective rather than subjective analysis of the record shows harmlessness. This novel reformulation of harmless error doctrine conflicts with controlling authority and does not make practical sense. 92 The reason that we do not have authority to invent a new kind of harmless error rule is that Congress and the federal rules have already laid down the law. We have to apply it, not substitute different rules some of us may prefer. Congress has commanded that in any case at all, which would include a pro se prisoner's civil lawsuit, we must disregard errors which do not affect the substantial rights of parties: 93 § 2111. Harmless error. 94 On the hearing of any appeal or writ of certiorari in any case, the court shall give judgment after an examination of the record without regard to errors or defects which do not affect the substantial rights of the parties. 95 28 U.S.C. § 2111 (emphasis added). Failure to send a Klingele form, even if we adhere to Klingele, affects a prisoner's procedural right to receive the form, not necessarily any substantive right to relief on account of the wrong he sues for. The statute means that unless failure to send the Klingele form affects the substantive right for the violation of which the prisoner sues, we are prohibited from reversing, whether the case is unusual and exceptional or not. 96 Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 61 says that no error or defect ... in anything ... omitted by the court or by any of the parties is ground for ... vacating ... or otherwise disturbing a judgment or order, unless refusal to take such action appears to the court inconsistent with substantial justice. This means that even if the district court and opposing counsel omit the Klingele form from whatever papers they send the prisoner, we are not permitted to vacate a summary judgment, unless the failure appears to the appellate panel inconsistent with substantial justice. Substantial justice means justice relating to substance rather than form. This rule does not allow us to flee from the exercise of judgment, as the majority's objective test suggests. We must disregard any error or defect in the proceeding which does not affect the substantial rights of the parties. 97 The word must in the second sentence of the rule and the phrase appears to the court inconsistent with substantial justice in the first sentence mean we are commanded to exercise judgment based on how the record looks to the judges on the panel. And our judgment has to focus on substantial justice, not on such objective procedural minutiae as whether the prisoner received a Klingele form in another lawsuit he filed. We appellate judges routinely do what Rule 61 says, as we must, on other errors. We read records and decide whether it appears to us that errors affected substantial justice. The rule requires us to do the same thing when the district court and counsel fail to send Klingele forms. 98 There is no way to reconcile today's majority opinion, limiting harmless error to exceptional and unusual cases, with the command of the statute and rule that we disregard harmless error in any case. Likewise, there is no way to reconcile the majority's restriction of harmless error affirmances to objective determinations involving no exercise of judgment (a deputy clerk or a well-programmed database could see whether there was a Klingele form in another file with the same prisoner as plaintiff) with the rule requiring us to decide whether the error appears to the court inconsistent with substantial justice. The flight from judgment required by today's majority opinion violates Rule 61. 99 The reason why Congress commanded us to disregard harmless error is that it has been engaged in a century-long campaign to move courts away from their nineteenth century tendency to reverse for technicalities without substantive significance. Congress enacted (or approved) harmless error rules to reverse the approach that in the nineteenth century had made appellate courts  'impregnable citadels of technicality.'  United States v. Widgery, 778 F.2d 325, 329 (7th Cir.1985) (quoting Roger Trayner, The Riddle of Harmless Error 14 (1970)). What matters about an error is whether it caused substantial injustice to a party, not whether the appellate court feels strongly about the desirability of adherence to the rule. When we reverse because of a mere technicality, we cause injustice to the party that had finally obtained an end to the litigation. Where an error does not affect substantial rights, the party that obtained an end to the lawsuit is entitled to an appellate stake through the lawsuit's heart. We can no more create out of whole cloth an exception to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 61 than we could to the analogous criminal harmless error rule, Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 52; the Supreme Court has more than once found it necessary to remind us of our lack of power regarding the latter rule. See, e.g., Johnson v. United States, 520 U.S. 461, 117 S.Ct. 1544, 1548, 137 L.Ed.2d 718 (1997). 100