Posner Seeks To Advise 4th Circ. Pro Se Litigant - Law360 https://www.law360.com/articles/975956/print?

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By Dave Simpson

Law360, New York (October 18, 2017, 9:52 PM EDT) -- Former Seventh Circuit Judge Richard
Posner, who complained after his retirement last month that his colleagues were mistreating
litigants who represent themselves, asked the Fourth Circuit on Wednesday to allow him to appear
as "advisory counsel" for a pro se filer.

Posner seeks to represent William C. Bond, who complained that a Maryland federal judge wrongly
blocked him from amending a florid $450 million lawsuit accusing numerous federal and state
agencies of a vast conspiracy to violate his First Amendment rights.

In a suit that the lower court judge compared to a political thriller, Bond describes a conspiracy
in which FBI agents tried to make his protest against the Maryland federal judiciary, which he calls
the White Guerrilla Family, go away by tapping his phones and internet, harassing him without
a warrant and posing as protesters.

Posner has repeatedly expressed frustration with the way courts deal with pro se litigants and said
upon retiring after 36 years in the Seventh Circuit that he wished to focus on the matter.

I have decided to dedicate my post-judicial career to helping pro se litigants, he said in an

affidavit filed with the Fourth Circuit on Wednesday.

After more than three decades on the bench, Posner suddenly retired on Sept. 2. He later told
Law360 that he left because of disagreements he was having with colleagues over how the court
handles pro se litigants, many of whom are prison inmates. It was the Seventh Circuits
January refusal to revive the lawsuit of a prisoner who was seriously injured after officials
allegedly failed to accommodate his medical condition that put him over the edge.

That suit began as a pro se case, though Jenner & Block LLP later represented the prisoner and
eventually his estate after the prisoner died.

Posner called the majority decision scandalous.

Thats when I started worrying about how we were treating pro ses, he told Law360. And as I
got into it, I realized that this was a very common problem. These pro ses were being thrown out
of the court even though they had often significant claims.

When asked by Law360 last month about who hed miss hearing arguments from after retirement,
he mentioned federal government lawyers, state government lawyers, senior lawyers at leading
litigation firms in Chicago, and pro ses, in the rare instance that they are allowed to argue.

Pros ses usually lose in the district court, he said. Then they appeal to us. The staff attorneys
usual recommendations are to dismiss the pro ses appeal, and often these recommendations are
sound, but sometimes theyre not, because I think the staff attorneys sense correctly that most of
the judges do not like pro ses and do not want to bother with them.

In the affidavit filed Wednesday, Posner extolled Bonds determination and energy.

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Posner Seeks To Advise 4th Circ. Pro Se Litigant - Law360 https://www.law360.com/articles/975956/print?section=appellate

I also find him to be very capable in many ways, very diligent, very focused, a very good writer
of legal documents, and I have benefited from his work ethic as I have not yet had an opportunity
to fully assemble my own litigation staff and [documentation], he wrote.

Bonds initial complaint, filed in July 2016, begins with a novelistic introduction, portraying a scene
like something out of HBOs The Wire.

The reporter slowed the small speedboat, then cut the engine off, it said, indented on either side
of the page like a passage from fiction. We were about a mile out of Baltimores Inner Harbor,
where the big cargo ships dropped anchor in the Patapsco River. The early fall 2010 day was
sunny, yet windy, the crisp sort of day where shorts and a long sleeve polo T-shirt felt just right.
The reporter pulled out some beers and chips from a cooler. Cheers, he said. Now, tell me about
the meeting you had with the Fourth Circuit judge.

The complaint jumps forward and backward in time as Bond describes being hassled by federal
agents as he tried to protest the Maryland federal courts, which he calls the White Guerrilla
Family.

Count 1 contains the lines: The second knock on your door from government law-enforcers
provokes fear. Why are they back?

In his April decision granting the federal governments motion to dismiss the case, Senior U.S.
District Judge David A. Faber said Bonds complaint reads like a political thriller.

And like other novels, in this complaint there seem to be far too much fiction, precious little fact,
and copious innuendo in short, too many conclusory allegations to commend it for its
veracity or even its plausibility. This is not a salutary feature, Judge Faber wrote. Plaintiff, it
seems, is intent on draining the federal judiciary of our limited resources.

Posner asked in his affidavit Wednesday for the court to waive a bar application requirement,
noting that he does not plan to practice law in any Fourth Circuit cases other than Bonds.

Bond would remain pro se under the agreement, Posner said in the affidavit.

Posner did not immediately respond to request for comment Wednesday.

Bond is representing himself.

The government is represented by Matthew P. Phelps of the U.S. Attorneys Office.

The case is In re: William Bond, case number 17-1955, in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth
Circuit.

--Additional reporting by Erin Coe. Editing by Nicole Bleier.

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