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

Heading: I. Klingele mistaken.

Text: 60
61 We invented, in Klingele v. Eikenberry, 849 F.2d 409 (9th Cir.1988), a rule that requires the district court to advise pro se prisoners about the requirements of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56 before their claims are dismissed on summary judgment. Our rule in Klingele had no basis in the United States Code or the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. We lack authority to impose general rules for district courts. 62 Congress gave the authority to make procedural rules for the district courts to the Supreme Court and the district courts, not to the courts of appeal. We have rule-making authority for our own court, at 28 U.S.C. § 2071(a), but not for district courts. The law on who has the power to make general rules of procedure for the district courts is clear: The Supreme Court shall have the power to prescribe general rules of practice and procedure ... for cases in the United States district courts.... 28 U.S.C. § 2072(a). The procedure is elaborate, and includes various bodies, but does not include the courts of appeal. See 28 U.S.C. §§ 2072(b), 2073. 63 Congress has clearly provided that district courts may, by prescribed procedures, promulgate rules consistent with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and the United States Code for management of pro se litigation and summary judgment procedure: all courts established by Act of Congress may from time to time prescribe rules for the conduct of their business. 28 U.S.C. § 2071(a) (emphasis added); see also Fed.R.Civ.P. 83(a). The word their means that a court can make rules for itself, but not for other courts. Under this unambiguous scheme, the general rules are uniform nationally, made after consideration of views from many sources. Congress takes advantage of local knowledge by enabling courts to make rules not inconsistent with the national scheme for governance of their own affairs, about which their judges have direct knowledge. Circuit judges are in between those who have direct local knowledge and those who can make uniform national rules; we do not have much to contribute. 64 The Supreme Court has protected against issuance of rules by federal courts outside their statutory authority, in order to assure exacting observance of the statutory procedures: 65 The problem then is one which peculiarly calls for exacting observance of the statutory procedures surrounding the rule-making powers of the Court, see 28 U.S.C. § 331 (advisory function of Judicial Conference), 28 U.S.C. § 2073 (prior report of proposed rule to Congress), designed to insure that basic procedural innovations shall be introduced only after mature consideration of informed opinion from all relevant quarters, with all the opportunities for comprehensive and integrated treatment which such consideration affords. 66 Miner v. Atlass, 363 U.S. 641, 650, 80 S.Ct. 1300, 4 L.Ed.2d 1462 (1960). See also Charles Alan Wright, Arthur R. Miller & Richard L. Marcus, 12 Federal Practice & Procedure § 3153 at 516. The majority takes the view that we can infer authority to enact basic procedural innovations from the need to protect prisoners' access to the courts and from our general supervisory power. 67 We do not have supervisory power over district courts so broad that we can exercise authority that Congress expressly gave only to other institutions. The supervisory power is part of the common law, and no court has common law power to disregard a rule or statute that was within the authority of Congress to enact. United States v. Widgery, 778 F.2d 325, 329 (7th Cir.1985). 68 The majority relies heavily on dicta in Jacobsen v. Filler, 790 F.2d 1362 (9th Cir.1986), to justify the exercise of rule making authority. But Jacobsen rejected extension of prisoner protections to non-prisoner pro se cases; it did not decide anything about the rights of pro se prisoners who file lawsuits. And Jacobsen justifies its refusal to expand pro se rights by noting that even if desirable, expansion would (as in the case at bar) exceed our rule-making authority: 69 Finally, even if a substantive notice requirement were desirable, it should be enacted through formal amendment rather than piecemeal adjudication. Rule 56's separate notice provision (compare Rule 56(c) with Rule 6(d)) and description of summary judgment (compare Rule 56(e) with Rule 12(b)) indicate that the Supreme Court and its Advisory Committee have considered the special problems raised by the summary judgment procedure and, by failing to require specific notice of the nature of summary judgment, have concluded that the present federal rules ... already apprise litigants of their summary judgment obligations. Requiring additional notice to pro se litigants would be an accretion onto Rule 56(c), not an interpretation of it; and as an ad hoc amendment it would not be standardized, codified, or subject to collective decision making. 70 Id. at 1366 (footnotes omitted). 71
72 The majority emphasizes how well and long-established Klingele is, as justification for keeping it. A ten year old rule in only a few circuits, rejected by others, is hardly Hadley v. Baxendale, 9 Exch. 341 (1854). Summary judgment, on the other hand, is treated as an upstart in the majority decision, despite being universal in federal civil procedure since 1938. 73 Of the thirteen federal circuits, seven have no Klingele notice requirements. A minority, six, have something along similar lines as Klingele. The Fifth Circuit has rejected a Klingele-type rule, holding that [t]he notice afforded by the Rules of Civil Procedure and the local rules are, in our view, sufficient. Martin v. Harrison County Jail, 975 F.2d 192, 193 (5th Cir.1992). The Eleventh Circuit rule provides for extra notice to all pro se litigants facing summary judgment motions; it does not give preferred treatment to prisoners as ours does. See Griffith v. Wainwright, 772 F.2d 822 (11th Cir.1985). The Seventh Circuit version allows for reversal only if the plaintiff can demonstrate prejudice from the lack of notice. See Sellers v. Henman, 41 F.3d 1100, 1102 (7th Cir.1994). Four circuits (including the Eleventh, discussed above) appear to require automatic reversal if the pro se prisoner in a civil suit is not given notice of what Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56 means. See Champion v. Artuz, 76 F.3d 483, 486 (2d Cir.1996); Neal v. Kelly, 963 F.2d 453 (D.C.Cir.1992); Griffith v. Wainwright, 772 F.2d 822 (11th Cir.1985); Roseboro v. Garrison, 528 F.2d 309 (4th Cir.1975). 74 About a quarter of all the appeals filed in our court are prisoner petitions, mostly pro se. See United States Courts-Ninth Circuit, 1995 Annual Report at 53 (of 8,367 appeals, 2,138 were prisoner petitions). Of course, some of these are extremely serious, such as death penalty habeas corpus petitions. But most are frivolous. People with serious disputes cannot get to the front of the line, cannot get their appeals decided faster, because so much of our time is absorbed with prisoners' suits. As Justice Kennedy has said, many of these suits involve our basic charter in support of claims which fall somewhere between the frivolous and the farcical and so foster disrespect for our laws. Crawford-El v. Britton, 523 U.S. ----, 118 S.Ct. 1584, 140 L.Ed.2d 759 (1998) (Kennedy, J., concurring). That is not to say Rand's case is frivolous or farcical; but the mechanical Klingele rule we hold onto today applies to a class of cases most of which are. 75 Congress and the Supreme Court have both recently given us good reason to reevaluate our Klingele policy of special assistance for prisoners' claims facing summary judgment. Congress, recognizing the burden of frivolous prisoners' suits on the federal courts, and their diversion of courts' time away from more worthy endeavors, amended the in forma pauperis statute in the 1996 Prison Litigation Reform Act to require dismissal at an early stage. Congress added a new requirement that courts shall dismiss a prisoner's case at any time if the court determines that the action is frivolous or malicious, or fails to state a claim on which relief may be granted, or seeks monetary relief against a defendant who is immune from such relief. 28 U.S.C. § 1915(e)(2)(B). Under the new law, prisoners must pay filing fees based on a schedule calibrated to their ability. 28 U.S.C. § 1915(a)(3). Also, under the new statute, Congress prohibited in forma pauperis appeals not taken in good faith. Id. 76 The Supreme Court, in the course of explicating certain aspects of qualified immunity, recently reminded us of the desirability of summary judgment as a way to dispose of prisoners' claims not frivolous on their face, but lacking a genuine issue of material fact or entitlement to relief as a matter of law. The Court said that summary judgment serves as the ultimate screen to weed out truly insubstantial lawsuits prior to trial. Crawford-El v. Britton, 523 U.S. ----, ----, 118 S.Ct. 1584, 1598, 140 L.Ed.2d 759 (1998). Rejecting a novel rule regarding immunity imposed on these cases by the District of Columbia Circuit, the Court said we ought to leave the handling of procedural management to the broad discretion of district judges instead of making up categorical rules: 77 It is the district judges rather than appellate judges like ourselves who have had the most experience in managing cases in which an official's intent is an element. Given the wide variety of civil rights and constitutional tort claims that trial judges confront, broad discretion in the management of the factfinding process may be more useful and equitable to all the parties than the categorical rule imposed by the Court of Appeals. 78 Id. at ----, 118 S.Ct. at 1598. This one-two punch, the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1996 and the Crawford-El language in 1998, are sufficient reason for us to reexamine the consistency of Klingele with the United States Code, federal rules, Supreme Court, and fairness to litigants other than pro se prisoners. 79 I do not think we are doing anything worthwhile, even for prisoners, with our Klingele rule. There is already a clear explanation of summary judgment procedures in plain English. It is the text of Rule 56. Prisoners can read it, certainly as well as they can read the federal or state criminal statutes they are in prison for violating. See Martin v. Harrison County Jail, 975 F.2d 192, 193 (5th Cir.1992). It is illogical and unfair to tell a man everyone is charged with knowing the law, and ignorance of the law is no excuse, when we send him to prison for violating a law he did not know about, perhaps as hard to understand as RICO or discharge in violation of an NPDES permit, and then when in prison he sues someone, to say he is not charged with knowing the law governing procedure in his own lawsuit until we send him a personal explanation. 80 Rule 56 is about as clear as the form the majority opinion appends, and considerably more complete. Our new form, at appendix A of the majority opinion, does not tell prisoners about partial summary judgments, as does Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 56(c). It fails to warn prisoners that affidavits must be made on personal knowledge, and that they must state facts such as would be admissible in evidence, and show affirmatively that the affiant is competent to testify to the matters stated therein, as Rule 56(e) does. It does not tell them about the possible availability of continuances for additional discovery, as Rule 56(f) does. It does not warn prisoners of the deadlines, usually requiring careful parsing of Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 56 and 6 and the Local Rules. Nor does our supposedly helpful explanation explain what it means by a real dispute about any fact or enlighten the prisoner on the hearsay rule, competency of witnesses, foundation, and all the other complexities that frequently require district courts to disregard affidavits. It does not even tell prisoners what its own terms of art, such as declarations, mean. 81 This is not to suggest that we should expand our form, or send prisoners to school to learn better how to sue people. We are not supposed to be advocates for a class of litigants, and it is hard to help pro ses very much without being unfair to their adversaries. Appendix A is no worse than any other boilerplate form we are likely to devise. The problem is that no such form is likely to do much good. Sending the prisoners copies of Rule 56 would be better. But if what we said was that district court must send prisoners copies of Rule 56 when summary judgment motions are made against their civil claims, that would beg the question of why we should reverse for failure to send what prisoners already have access to in prison law libraries (sometimes better access than other pro ses, who may live away from accessible law libraries). It is not sensible for the court to tell laymen that they must file an 'affidavit' without at the same time explaining what an affidavit is; that, in turn impels a rudimentary outline of the rules of evidence. Jacobsen v. Filler, 790 F.2d 1362, 1365 (9th Cir.1986). 82 There is not much reason to assume, as the majority does, that sending prisoners a form saying a few things about summary judgment procedure will make proceedings fairer. Those who cannot understand Rule 56 are not likely to understand the majority's form either. We do not achieve more fairness by sending them a piece of paper that has no meaning to them. All we do is generate some arbitrary and capricious reversals in cases where deputy clerks and secretaries to assistant attorneys general neglect to send the meaningless paper. 83 If we were simply to leave district courts alone in this matter, respecting their own authority and the absence of ours in the controlling statutes, they would likely achieve more substantial fairness for pro ses than our boilerplate form. Sometimes an experienced district judge or magistrate reads a prisoner's papers, thinks if this is true, this fellow really may have been wronged, and issues a sua sponte order directing the prisoner and the prison authorities to produce the papers likely to show whether the claim should go to trial. Individualized processes have practical utility in identifying and fairly adjudicating prisoners' complaints, unlike Klingele boilerplate forms. Today's decision may discourage useful district court initiatives to promote fairness, because after reading the California Attorney General's form that we reject today as saying too much and not enough in not quite the right way, some district judges may think it is too dangerous to experiment. 84 The pleadings stage is more dangerous to good claims than the summary judgment stage, because pro se prisoner petitions are often hard to understand, yet the statute plainly commands dismissal of frivolous claims before docketing. 28 U.S.C. § 1915A. There are plenty of ways to lose a meritorious case at every stage, and it is capricious to single out summary judgment for a special paperwork requirement. 85 There is no justification for treating prisoners' complaints with special solicitude that we do not give to other pro se complaints. It seems to be assumed by some that prisoners cannot hire lawyers, but no facts have been offered to support that assumption. An occasional prisoner may have a great deal of money, and many have some. And of those prisoners with good claims for substantial money damages, all have plenty of money, for purposes of having the ability to hire a lawyer. 86 The contingent fee and 42 U.S.C. § 1988 give every prisoner with a good claim for substantial damages the financial ability to assure a lawyer adequate recompense for prosecuting the prisoner's case. We have approved § 1988 awards where the attorneys obtained many times as much money as they got for their clients. See, e.g., Morales v. City of San Rafael, 96 F.3d 359 (9th Cir.1996) ($139,783.25 for the lawyer, $17,500 for the client, for an arrest without probable cause). Millions of dollars have been awarded in a single case to prisoners' lawyers. See Gates v. Deukmejian, 987 F.2d 1392 (9th Cir.1992). 87 That a person litigates pro se may indicate that the person simply did not have a meritorious and substantial enough claim to induce a lawyer to take the case. That is among the many reasons why judges must avoid undesirable, open-ended participation by the court in cases with pro ses on one side. Rand v. Rowland, 113 F.3d 1520, 1526 (9th Cir.1997) (O'Scannlain, J., concurring). 88