Court Opinion

ID: 9472332
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 03:56:43.786882+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:52.151825
License: Public Domain

SCALIA, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
I agree with the majority’s analysis of the requirements of 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5(f)(1) (1976). I dissent because I believe the record fails to show what I believe to be the prerequisite for invocation of those requirements: an application by the complainant based upon an asserted reason that the statute permits (“I am too poor” or “My cause is too unpopular”). It may even be that upon application without any stated reason the court must inquire as to what the reason might be. That was done here on September 17. (The Court: “Would you mind ... stating why you have been unable to [get counsel]? Has it been financial?” Mr. Poindexter: “No.”) At that point, it seems to me, the court’s obligation was clearly at an end. I reject the notion that the plaintiff’s statement immediately before this exchange (“I think I could manage [to pay counsel] providing I can keep my job”) amounted to some sort of springing averment of impecuniousness that took effect when he was dismissed. It is unreasonable to demand that when the district judge next spoke to the appellant — more than two months later, on November 20, after he had lost his job — she have had this negative pregnant in mind. Moreover, even if the previous (and, in all likelihood, forgotten) condition ripened into an averment of impecuniousness when he was dismissed, surely that averment was effectively cancelled when he later advised the court that — unemployed though he was — he had hired counsel, at an agreed-upon retainer of $1,300, $800 of which had been paid.
Nor would the circumstances have put the court on notice that this litigant could not afford counsel. The plaintiff was neither uneducated nor long unemployed. He had held a steady job at the FBI for seven years, during the last four and a half years at a clerical level. On leaving the government he had withdrawn his accumulated contributions to the retirement fund; and he was entitled to unemployment compensation, apparently in the amount of $196 per week. He claimed to have experienced financial difficulty making it impossible for him to take depositions before January 5, 1982, when his first unemployment checks arrived (though he spent $232 to go by plane to his home town during this period). But this temporary impecuniousness was not brought to the court’s attention until February 10, in explanation of the plain*1193tiff’s request to extend discovery time since only now was he financially able to proceed. By this time he had already offered a lawyer a $1,300 retainer, and three weeks later was prepared to go ahead with five depositions at a cost of at least $300 apiece. At no time, therefore, did the court have reason to believe that the plaintiff was currently impecunious.
It appears to me from this record that the district judge went well beyond any requirement of law in attempting to help out a plaintiff who never claimed impecuniousness, who had every appearance of solvency, and whose main problem seemed to be the legal unattractiveness of his case. The portions of the majority opinion dealing with the requirements of 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5(f)(l) will be of great benefit to our district judges; the portion dealing with its application here will teach them only one unhappy lesson: never be a volunteer.