Court Opinion

ID: 9491340
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:11:30.44907+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:54:40.833261
License: Public Domain

WATERS, Senior District Judge,
concurring.
I agree that the Garrett cased filed on June 26, 1998, precludes this panel from reading the PLRA amendments and applying them as we believe they are written, and, thus, I concur in this opinion.
I write this separate concurrence to emphasize my agreement with footnote 4, above, and to express my concern about the effect that the Garrett holding is likely to have on the beneficial affect that the PLRA has already had on the filing by prisoners of largely frivolous lawsuits.
I have been a trial judge in the Western District of Arkansas for almost 17 years. During that period, experience has taught me that, over the years, trial courts have *820become increasingly burdened by frivolous lawsuits, many, but by no means all, filed by prisoners with petty gripes about one thing or another, such as purported constitutional claims that they were furnished with the wrong soap, and the like. Each of these cases, irrespective of how frivolous, require substantial court time, detracting from and delaying legitimate and important litigation before the court.
The Western District of Arkansas encompasses a largely rural area with no major urban areas, and no prison facilities other than county and municipal jails, yet, for the year prior to the PLRA, we had 389 prisoner cases filed, or 41% of our civil docket. At times, the prisoner filings approached 60% of our civil filings. For the year after the PLRA was instituted in the district, prisoner eases dropped to 217, or 20% of. our civil docket, a 44% decrease in filings of prisoner cases.
The figures for our sister district to the east, the Eastern District of Arkansas, which has all of the institutions in the Arkansas prison system, also dramatically shows that the PLRA has accomplished what congress intended. For the 12 month period prior to the PLRA, that district had 955 prisoner cases filed, comprising 41% of its civil docket. For the 12 months after the statute became effective, the filings dropped to 869(33%) and, for the period from July 97 to June 98, there were 733 filings, constituting only 31% of the civil filings.
I am fearful that, after the “jailhouse lawyers” and “recreational filers” learn about Garrett, we will be right back where we started or nearly so. When they learn that they don’t have to submit with their complaint the required affidavit and statement of account, most, if not all, will be filed without them. This will likely result in many prisoner lawsuits being filed where there will never ■be compliance, requiring procedures ■ to be instituted by clerk’s offices and district courts, and time spent, to keep the docket cleared of these matters that aren’t going anywhere.
If this court is going to prescribe procedures, guidelines or rules for district courts to follow as it did in Henderson v. Norris, 129 F.3d 481 (8th Cir.1997), I suggest that it would be appropriate and effective, and still provide protection for the prisoner’s rights, for trial courts to be directed to stamp nonconforming papers tendered by a prisoner “received”, as most, if not all, district courts in the circuit now do. The clerk could be directed to then notify the prisoner of the deficiencies and PLRA requirements, and give the prisoner 30 days to comply. If there was not compliance during that time, the papers would not be filed and no lawsuit commenced. The papers could then be returned to the prisoner.