Posted on 07/20/2005 2:20:08 PM PDT by SwinneySwitch
Some of Texas’ busiest lawyers may not be members of the state bar, but bars are a part of their daily lives.
Almost any district court official in a county that is home to a Texas Department of Criminal Justice prison unit can offer support to the claim that some prison inmates have too much free time on their hands and they often take advantage of that time to create new mischief, in district courts.
Bee County District Clerk Sandra Clark and her staff know what kind of mischief they can expect from the so-called “jailhouse lawyers.” According to Mrs. Clark, jailhouse lawyers often share a common interest.
“They love to sue, they relish in it,” she said this week. In some counties the number of suits filed by prison inmates reached critical levels but recently judges began fighting back by declaring some prison lawyers “vexatious litigants,” and limiting their access to state courts.
Several years ago the problem of inmate lawsuits had gotten so bad for some district clerks that state legislators passed House Bill 1343, a law that made it harder for prison inmates to file lawsuits over for petty reasons. The law, passed in June 1995, actually rewrote Chapter 14 of the Civil Practices and Remedies Code.
The main benefit of the law was that it gave district clerks the right to mark a lawsuit “received” but to refuse to actually file the suit if the clerk deemed that it did not meet certain requirements. The clerk would keep a copy of the suit, mail back the original and assign the case a unique number that would allow district clerk staffs to keep track of it. The returned original would be mailed with a cover page that listed the problems with the suit.
The new law worked for a while, then jailhouse lawyers began to read Chapter 14, looking for ways around it. The result was that inmates here began filing suits against Mrs. Clark herself with at least two of those filed in federal court. Both federal cases, filed as civil rights issues, were eventually thrown out of court but both were appealed and the appeals were turned down by judges reviewing the cases.
In an apparent attempt to stop the lawsuits being filed against Mrs. Clark, the judges on the Court of Appeals in Corpus Christi directed her to begin filing all inmate suits again. She is one of only a handful of district clerks who have been ordered to file all inmate suits in spite of HB 1343.
Now, district judges are beginning to consider a new weapon in the fight against the plethora of inmate lawsuits being filed in courts across the state. Mrs. Clark said District Judge Janna Whatley recently declared one local prison inmate “vexatious” after learning that the judges on the Court of Appeals had taken the same action against a TDCJ inmate who had sued the appeals court itself.
The term “vexatious” comes from the word “vex,” which means “to irritate or annoy.” Mrs. Clark described the actions of one local TDCJ inmate who may be declared vexatious in a future ruling. She said that inmate has filed 10 lawsuits in Bee County alone. However, Chapter 14 requires that inmates filing suits in Texas courts must provide an affidavit showing all pending lawsuits filed in other jurisdictions. That inmate’s pending suits in other courts filled up six pages with two columns on each page written in small hand print. “We are seeking to have him declared vexatious by one of the judges here,” Mrs. Clark said.
Being declared vexatious means that the inmate who has earned the description will have his or her ability to file new lawsuits severely restricted. In some cases, the inmate will forfeit his or her right to ever file another lawsuit in Texas. Also, vexatious inmates will have to pay the fee required to file the suit in whatever district court that allows the suit to be filed, a rule that every other litigant has to follow. Mrs. Clark said that so far only one inmate here has paid his filing fee.
Inmates who file suits are required to include sworn affidavits claiming that none of their previous lawsuits are litigious. Mrs. Clark said they are able to do so because all of their previous cases usually are pending, meaning they have not been settled.
Each time an inmate files suit against Mrs. Clark, the county pays its attorney, Philip McKinney, to represent her. That ends up costing local taxpayers money. Also, court proceedings connected to the suit take up part of her time.
Mrs. Clark hopes the vexatious declarations continue and that they do some good.
“We’re getting all kind of suits again,” she said. In one suit, an inmate who apparently asked how many pork chops he would be allowed to eat was told he could eat all he wanted. He did and when he became sick, he filed suit against the state. She said those kind of suits have been encouraged by state judges who award cash judgments against the state to the benefit of the inmates who file the suits.
Just last week, Mrs. Clark said, seven inmate appeals cases were filed, all by only two inmates. Showing just how much time the inmates invest in those suits, she said they must exhaust all administrative remedies and go through the entire TDCJ grievance process before they are allowed to file suit in district court.
Mrs. Clark said one of the worries among local court officials trying to deal with the problem is whether the Court of Appeals will allow local judges to continue to declare TDCJ inmates vexatious. However, she said TDCJ officials also are looking into their ability to reduce good time for prison inmates who file frivolous or malicious lawsuits and waste taxpayers’ money.
Mrs. Clark said the problem here has gotten so bad that she has assigned one of her deputies, Brenda Gonzales, the task of keeping up with inmate lawsuits. She said it makes it easier to keep track of the suits if they are the responsibility of one person.
The problem is bad in other counties where TDCJ units are located. However, Mrs. Clark said those clerks do not have near the problems with inmate lawsuits that her office has.
The clerk said she is careful to screen the cases filed by local inmates to make sure that no deserving cases are dismissed. Cases that were not filed included the kind in which an inmate was “screaming about peanut butter.” Others included cases that could have been handled by the district attorney.
“I wasn’t just throwing them in the garbage can by any means,” she said of the cases she did not file. In virtually all the cases filed by inmates, the prisoners are representing themselves in court.
“This cannot continue,” Mrs. Clark said of recent attempts by jailhouse lawyers to thwart the efforts of HB 1343. “It’s bombarded not just this office but the entire judicial system all over again.”
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Chain Gangs!
and pink jumpsuits.
What's worse, the federal court system "sold" the right to reprint case material to the indexing publisher so that this material which should be available to all on the internet, isn't available to an unincarcerated citizen.
You know, that sale of publishing rights could probably be challenged in court. If only someone would file suit :)
TDCJ Ping!
Please FReepmail me if you want on or off this South Texas/Mexico ping list.
That's the sound of the men working on the chain gang
All day long they're singing
my, my, my, my, my , my, my work is so hard
Give me water, I'm thirsty
my work is so hard
Doesn't Texas have a statute against Barratry?
I handle a lot of my own legal work and you haven't been looking in the right places.
My experience has been that every courthouse has a law library for the use of lawyers who need a quick 'fix' but because it is on public property, the library is open to the public for use.
Similarly, many public libraries and universities have all the law books and case reports and are accessible by the public.
You can find a tremendous amount of legal information and case law on the internet at Findlaw.com.
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