Court Opinion

ID: 9490296
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 13:39:18.060097+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:54:01.049239
License: Public Domain

O’SCANNLAIN, Circuit Judge,
specially concurring.
I concur because Klingele indeed dictates that we vacate summary judgment and reinstate Rand’s claims since the district court failed to provide him with the required notice. I write separately to point up how-after nearly nine years in application-the formal requirements of the Klingele rule continue to subsume any purported justification for its creation.
In Klingele v. Eikenberry, 849 F.2d 409 (9th Cir.1988), we created a “bright-line” rule that district courts “are obligated to advise prisoner pro per litigants of Rule 56 requirements” before entering summary judgment against them. Id. at 411-12. This obligation is found nowhere in the text of Rule 56. Rather, Klingele rests on the rationale of Hudson v. Hardy, 412 F.2d 1091 (D.C.Cir.1968), the seminal “fair notice” case. Hudson devised from scratch the rule that district courts should provide pro se prisoners with “fair notice of the requirements of the *1526summary judgment rule” before summary judgment can be entered. Id. at 1094. Good idea or not, Hudson lacks any foundation in the text of Rule 56 and, to its credit, barely pretends to. Hudson simply proclaimed “that the requirements of the summary judgment rule may not be fairly applied ‘with strict literalness’ to a prisoner unrepresented by counsel and subject to the ‘handicaps detention necessarily imposes upon a litigant.’ ” Id. (citation omitted).
We first acknowledged Hudson in Jacobsen v. Filler, 790 F.2d 1362 (9th Cir.1986), where we acquiesced in a footnote that its notice requirement applied to imprisoned pro se litigants. In refusing, however, to extend the notice requirement to all pro se litigants, we explained that
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 and description of summary judgment 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.
Id. at 1366 (internal parentheticals and citation omitted). I, for one, fail to see why it is improper for us to amend Rule 56 with respect to all pro se litigants but perfectly acceptable to amend it with respect to imprisoned pro se litigants.
Even if it were proper for us to accrete our desires onto Rule 56 in certain circumstances, Jacobsen further explains why “fair notice” rules may not necessarily be “desirable”:
Imposing an obligation to give notice of Rule 56’s evidentiary standards would also invite an undesirable, open-ended participation by the court in the summary judgment process. 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. Unlike the conversion of a 12(b)(6) motion into a motion for summary judgment, which only requires notice of what the motion now is, Jacobsen’s proposal requires advice as to what the motion must mean. To give that advice would entail the district court’s becoming a player in the adversary process rather than remaining its referee.
Id. at 1365-66 (internal footnotes omitted). Why, with respect to prisoners, does the notice obligation not invite the same “undesirable, open-ended participation by the court in the summary judgment process” as it does with respect to any other pro se litigant? I am inclined to agree with the Fifth Circuit that “[t]he notice afforded by the Rules of Civil Procedure and the local rules are ... sufficient. To adopt any other rule would make it impossible to determine precisely what notice was adequate in a given case.” Martin v. Harrison County Jail, 975 F.2d 192, 193 (5th Cir.1992).
Admittedly, only one other circuit has expressly disavowed the Hudson rule.1 In six other circuits, including ours, some form of Hudson notice must precede the entry of summary judgment against an imprisoned pro se litigant.2 No circuit but ours, howev*1527er, has so elevated form over substance as to mandate the absurd and wasteful rule we must apply today.
As we place Rand’s eight-year-old case back on the district court’s docket, we should keep in mind, first, that Rand did have actual notice of what Rule 56 requires. Defendants, in their notice of motion, provided Rand with a two-page explanation of Rule 56 and its requirements. Of course Klingele requires that the district court itself advise the plaintiff of what Rule 56 requires.3 Notice by the moving party is insufficient. Nothing in Klingele, however, explains why this should be so. The Second Circuit requires only “an easily comprehensible notice from the party moving for summary judgment.” Champion v. Artuz, 76 F.3d 483, 486 (2d Cir.1996). The same applies in the Seventh and District of Columbia Circuits, where the district court must provide notice only if the defendants fail to do so. See Kincaid v. Vail, 969 F.2d 594, 599 (7th Cir.1992), cert. denied, 506 U.S. 1062, 113 S.Ct. 1002, 122 L.Ed.2d 152 (1993); Neal v. Kelly, 963 F.2d 453, 457 (D.C.Cir.1992).
Our opinion professes that, like the Seventh Circuit, “[w]e are naturally reluctant to impose additional duties on our overburdened district courts.” Lewis v. Faulkner, 689 F.2d 100, 102 (7th Cir.1982). The least we could do, then, is to adopt the very next sentence that the Seventh Circuit uttered: “But we trust that counsel for defendants in prisoner civil rights eases in this circuit will lift this new burden from the judges’ shoulders, by henceforth including in any motion for summary judgment” the requisite notice. Id. Our circuit not only fails to encourage defendants to carry the burden, we forbid them to.
We also should keep in mind that, apart from the notice that Rand received from defendants, Rand actually responded to the summary judgment motion. Unsophisticated litigant that he was, Rand filed the following motion to extend the time to respond upon receipt of defendants’ motion:
Plaintiff is a state prisoner proceeding pro se with this 42 U.S.C. § 1983 civil rights action. Defendants caused to be served upon the Plaintiff their MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT on February 26, 1993. Pursuant to Local Rule 230(m) Plaintiff must respond to this pretrial motion within Twenty-one (21) days of service.
Plaintiff requests he be granted an extension of time to and including March 26, 1993.
On March 26, 1993, Rand timely filed his opposition to the summary judgment motion with declarations, responses to discovery requests, and other exhibits.
Neither Rand’s demonstrated awareness that he had to respond nor his actual response matters under Klingele, however, for we have refused “to erode the Hudson rule by allowing district courts to avoid giving the requisite advice based on a determination that a prisoner has the requisite sophistication in legal matters.” Klingele, 849 F.2d at 411. Thus, we must vacate summary judgment, which Rand opposed with affidavits and other responsive material, because the district court did not notify Rand that he could submit affidavits and other responsive materials. Maybe we should rethink this.
The Seventh Circuit, for instance, does not reverse for failure to provide notice “unless there is reason to believe that the plaintiff was prejudiced by the failure, that is, that he could have established that there was a genu*1528ine issue of material fact, precluding the grant of summary judgment, if he had had a reasonable opportunity to submit affidavits.” Sellers v. Henman, 41 F.3d 1100, 1102 (7th Cir.1994) (citation omitted). I would expect that where, as here, a plaintiff actually submits affidavits and exhibits, no prejudice would lie, a most reasonable result entirely consistent with the purpose of Hudson.
For all these reasons, I hardly would be opposed to revisiting the rule of Klingele en banc. For now, however, Klingele mandates the result in this case, and I perforce concur.

. Williams v. Browman, 981 F.2d 901, 903 (6th Cir.1992) (noting that "[t]here is no authority in this Circuit for the proposition that a district court must advise a pro se prisoner of his right to file counter-affidavits or other responsive material or that he must be alerted to the fact that his failure to so respond with such material might result in entry of summary judgment against him”).

. See Champion v. Artuz, 76 F.3d 483, 486 (2d Cir.1996) (holding that "summary judgment should not be entered by default against a pro se plaintiff who has not been given any notice that failure to response will be deemed a default”); Timms v. Frank, 953 F.2d 281, 283 (7th Cir.) (holding that pro se prisoner "is entitled to receive notice of the consequences of failing to respond with affidavits to a motion for summary judgment”), cert. denied, 504 U.S. 957, 112 S.Ct. *15272307, 119 L.Ed.2d 228 (1992); Griffith v. Wainwright, 772 F.2d 822, 825 (11th Cir.1985) (holding that “adverse party must be given express, ten-day notice of the summary judgment rules”); Roseboro v. Garrison, 528 F.2d 309, 310 (4th Cir.1975) (requiring "that the plaintiff be advised of his right to file counter-affidavits or other responsive material and alerted to the fact that his failure to so respond might result in the entry of summary judgment against him”); Hudson, 412 F.2d at 1094 (D.C.Cir.1968) (holding that "before entering summaiy judgment ... the District Court ... should have provided him with fair notice of the requirements of the summaiy judgment rule”).

. See Arreola v. Mangaong, 65 F.3d 801, 802 (9th Cir.1995) (explaining that “[ajlthough ... adequate notice was provided to Arreola by the citation in Dr. Mangaong’s notice of motion to Klingele and Rule 56, Klingele requires that the notice be provided by the district court”).