Fun With Pro Se Lawsuits

One summer in law school I worked for the county attorney in Charleston. He's the guy who handled the county government's administrative and procedural issues. Litigation was farmed out to big civil firms. Even though he didn't do litigation work, lawsuits generally were served at the county commission office where I worked, so I occasionally got to thumb through them. That was where I first got a taste of the wild-eyed crazy pro se lawsuit.

Suits brought by regular folk without attorneys aren't necessarily crazy, but crazy folks - and I'm talking certifiably tin-foil-hat-wearing loony - often proceed with their own counsel. Such was the gentleman who was suing just about everybody at every level of government - from the county on up to the president - for some perceived tort that was not particularly well developed in the pages and pages of hand written pleadings.

Along those lines, James Grimmelmann over at PrawfsBlawg points to what might be the mother of all goofy pro se suits. It's 57-page caption (in the federal court database) includes such usual suspects as Duhbya, Cheney, and Rumsfeld. It also includes a few new conspirators:

* www.accuweather.com
* Queen of England
* Gambino Crime Family
* Vienna Convention
* Jewish Workers at NBC/Universal
* Plato
* Various Buddhist Monks
* Medieval Times
* The Da Vinci Code
* POW-MIA
* The Appalachian Trail
* Planet of Pluto
* Cleo, Miss
* Ninja Samurai Fighters
* Engine #9, Fire Department
* Choicepoint
* Psychology Socialism

I'm not sure which I like more - the inclusion of the long dead and decayed Plato or the never quite alive Appalachian Trail! As James says, "[t]ruly a work of art."