Court Opinion

ID: 9550758
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 18:41:51.969778+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:22:19.369792
License: Public Domain

Hale, C.J.
(dissenting) — Litigation is fast becoming a major industry in this country. Since it produces no usable commodity and at best is no more than an evil necessary to the just and peaceable settlement of disputes in a free society, its growth should not be stimulated by the courts.
The court in this case, I think, not only encourages vain litigation but in doing so more performs perhaps an ill-advised charity than vindicates a constitutional principle. The money for this charity, when ultimately paid, must come from the public whose legislature has never appropriated and whose constitutions have never contemplated it. The award of a free statement of facts in private litigation is, *170therefore, in excess of the court’s powers and without sanction of law.
Another problem arises: If the legislature does not pay this fee, then the money will have to come from the court reporter in the form of free professional services and work. The court’s act of charity thus includes a free statement of facts at public expense for wholly private purposes, but failing accomplishment will deprive the court reporter of his property without due process of law by directing him to do work he values at $1.50 per page, without payment. If the legislature does not pay this fee — which it is not, in my opinion, obliged to do — it is the court reporter who will be performing the charity and not this court.
.The court persists in speaking of justice. It seems unjust to me, however, to direct the expenditure of public money for purely private purposes. Plaintiff here brings this case to vindicate a private wrong; the avails, if any, will inure wholly to her exclusively for her personal benefit in recovery of her personal claim or demand. This litigation has already cost the public far more than the amount in controversy. Speaking of justice, I think it an injustice that one person be afforded privileges and immunities at public expense not available to all persons under like conditions. If the court considered it just to furnish a free statement of facts to this plaintiff in this case, it must be prepared to do the same in the future to all persons of limited financial means. All persons, in justice, should include not only indigent persons or those nearly so but any persons having or put to the defense of any purely private claim or demand, the cost of which may materially impair the party’s economic status.
For this reason, this court should not mistake the precedential effect of its opinion. This is no mere application to proceed in forma pauperis in a private action which at most entails no more than a waiver of the filing fee (O’Connor v. Matzdorff, 76 Wn.2d 589, 458 P.2d 154 (1969)), but constitutes an actual demand for a free statement of facts at public expense soon to be followed presumably by a de*171mand for appointment of counsel, preparation and furnishing of a transcript, preparation and costs of briefs — all at public expense in private litigation.
That plaintiff Lil Iverson was on public assistance when her cause of action against defendant Marine Bancorporation arose should be of no legal consequence. At no time did the Department of Social and Health Services of this state, nor its predecessor agency, nor any other agency of the state charged with providing financial aid and sustenance to impecunious persons, step forward to acknowledge that costs of private litigation were so essential to her well-being as to be advanced or assured as a part of her public assistance budget. No agency of the state administering a budget of public funds for the relief and remedy of economic distress has admitted the funding of private litigation to be a legitimate expenditure of public money. Court costs and attorney fees in private actions simply do not rank with food, shelter and medical care and necessary transportation as among the responsibilities which the public has thus far assumed.
The court now finds that, if those agencies already charged by law with providing public funds to indigent persons for food, rent, medical care, hospitalization, medicines and essential transportation will not do so, somehow the constitution, nevertheless, makes the state liable for the costs of private litigation. Just where the constitutions say or imply this I find impossible to locate. If the plaintiff has a constitutional right to a free statement of facts from the public treasury, then it inexorably follows that she has a constitutional right to free counsel, free transcript, free travel for herself and counsel to and from the places where the actual trial and appeals are to be heard. This has been legislatively and judicially recognized in criminal matters. Laws of 1965, ch. 133, p. 1382; ROA 1-47. Assuming that the constitutional pivot for such a ruling is the fact of indigency, then what is to be the disposition where an indigent person brings action against one not quite indigent but nearly so? Where is the fine to be drawn? Or, will the *172court, to maintain equal protection, fix the line at a point where any person claiming a cause of action or asserting a defense or cross claim thereto, the expenses of which would substantially diminish his standard of living, must, as a matter of law, be deemed indigent for the purpose of determining whether he is entitled to a free statement of facts and free counsel in private litigation? Under the court’s opinion, this court will have to answer these questions and soon, and on the basis of the precedent established by this case it must necessarily be held that nearly everyone except those of substantial means is entitled to litigate or defend private affairs at public expense.
Outside the fantasies in which courts occasionally indulge, there.is no authority for the court’s opinion in this case and practically no logic to sustain it. The leading case, of course, is Boddie v. Connecticut, 401 U.S. 371, 28 L. Ed. 2d 113, 91 S. Ct. 780 (1971), a decision which simply held that, because the ultimate power to dissolve marriages had been placed exclusively in the courts of Connecticut and there existed no alternative means of dissolving a marriage, an indigent person could not be deprived of the capability of filing his divorce action because of lack of a filing fee. Boddie’s limitation to divorce cases is expressly shown in the court’s declaration that “resort to the state courts is the only avenue to dissolution of . . . marriages’ ”, and on the rationale that, because no alternative means of dissolving a marriage existed, the state could not constitutionally deprive a poor person of the right to file his action solely because of inability to pay the filing fee. It takes an extraordinary stretch of the imagination to sensibly expand the Boddie rationale — even in divorce actions — to constitute a ruling that the courts of Connecticut must provide free statements of fact on appeal and a posteriori free transcript and counsel.
That Boddie is of extremely narrow application — one limiting it to waiver of filing or appearance fees in divorce actions — may be seen in the next case arising on a related subject. In United States v. Kras, 409 U.S. 434, 445, 34 L. *173Ed. 2d 626, 93 S. Ct. 631 (1973), the court held that a petitioner had no constitutional right to free access to the bankruptcy courts. Referring to Boddie, the court ruled that one’s interest in a bankruptcy discharge “does not rise to the same constitutional level” as one’s inability to dissolve his marriage except through the courts. Accordingly, the Kras decision asserted the principle that the district court’s refusal to waive an indigent’s filing fee in bankruptcy did not constitute a violation of the indigent’s constitutional rights to due process or equal protection of the law.
Next, Kras was cited as controlling in Ortwein v. Schwab, 410 U.S. 656, 35 L. Ed. 2d 572, 93 S. Ct. 1172 (1973), in which an Oregon statute requiring a $25 filing fee to be paid in applications made to the appellate courts to obtain review of agency decisions lowering welfare payments was questioned. Despite, the acknowledged indigency of welfare recipients, the statutory fee for appellate review of administrative decisions was not equated with the Bod-die decision upon which this court now rests its determination that the state now has a constitutional duty to provide a free statement of facts and presumably counsel, too, in private litigation brought by indigent persons seeking private remedies. This principle of discouraging the imposition of added burdens upon the public treasury for the payment of purely private purposes was extended to such quasi public matters as housing. See Meltzer v. C. Buck LeCraw & Co., 402 U.S. 954 and at 936, 937, 941, 964, 966, 29 L. Ed. 2d 124, 91 S. Ct. 1624 (1971), denying certiorari to a series of indigent appellants who, because of indigency, were unable to post appeal bonds required in appeals from adverse judgments in housing eviction cases, or to pay court costs associated with other litigation. Accord, Williams v. Shaffer, 222 Ga. 334, 149 S.E.2d 668 (1966), cert. denied, 385 U.S. 1037, 17 L. Ed. 2d 683, 87 S. Ct. 772 (1967); West Haven Housing Authority v. Simmons, 5 Conn. Cir. Ct. 282, 250 A.2d 527, appeal denied, 156 Conn. 662, 243 A.2d 83 (1968).
*174This court should not make the mistake of assuming that to direct the furnishing of a free statement of facts to indigent persons in civil appeals brought for the personal benefit of the appellant is the constitutional equivalent of ordering a mere waiver of the filing fee in district court as in O’Connor v. Matzdorff, 76 Wn.2d 589, 458 P.2d 154 (1969); nor the approving referral to the legislature for the payment of attorney fees for an indigent prisoner in a habeas corpus proceeding. Honore v. State Bd. of Prison Terms & Paroles, 77 Wn.2d 660, 466 P.2d 485 (1970). In the present case, the court is virtually mandating that all indigent persons are entitled as a matter of constitutional law to free litigation including counsel, appearance fees, statements of fact, briefs and all other things essential to bringing, defending or prosecuting an appeal in private civil litigation. It will have to apply that principle in the interests of equal protection and freedom from special privilege and immunity to all persons, not only those who are indigent, or nearly so, but to everyone upon whom the costs of private litigation will have substantial financial impact.
That petitioner has not been denied due process of law is seen in the circuitous progress of this case. She commenced an action against Marine Bancorporation to recover damages for her wrongful eviction. She waived a jury and tried the case to the court which awarded her damages of $1,000.
Although she won a judgment she claimed error, in that the $1,000 award was insufficient, and demanded a new trial which, on hearing, was denied by the superior court in 1970; since that time her case has been winding through the appellate and trial courts unendingly. There, I think, the matter should have ended unless the plaintiff elected to spend her own money perfecting her own appeal.
Accordingly, I would affirm.