Amicus Briefs Encouraged by Judge Rudofsky

A week got away from me without the time to cheer for Judge Lee P. Rudofsky and his fantastic idea. No really. This is not said sarcastically.

Unlike Judge Susan Kaye Weaver, Judge Rudofsky is not pure evil. He has some fine qualities. One is a brilliant mind.

He is so smart, in fact, that when he makes an error, I question whether he is playing dumb like a fox. How can someone so smart get it so wrong, unless the error is intentional?

He came out with an order on March 21, 2023 in which he gets it all right. See the entire order in the Judge’s words posted below.

Basically, this is an invitation to encourage attorneys to write amicus briefs for non-clients, pro-bono at the Federal District Court.

Amicus means “friend”. The Amicus Brief is not written by a litigant or the litigant’s attorney; it is written by a “friend of the court”. This is a practice that is common at the circuit courts and the Supreme Court, but it is done rarely at the district court.

The reason I am excited about this new tool for litigants is that most pro se litigants don’t have the money to hire an attorney and in all but limited kinds of civil cases, most attorneys will not work on contingency.

If the case involves an important issue, an attorney may agree to get involved for the one specific task of writing an amicus brief.

For example, I brought a pro se case against a debt buyer named Portfolio Recovery Associates, LLC in the Eastern District of Arkansas. Judge Rudofsky is presiding.

One claim I made was that the debt collection activity was “outrageous”. Judge Rudofsky said no reasonable juror could agree with me and dismissed the claim at the motion for summary judgment stage. Had someone from the CFPB or Institute for Justice been able to submit a brief, it might have carried more weight for the argument that the legislature enacted the FDCPA to deter debt collectors from PRA’s exact conduct, and that PRA is a repeat offender that knows it is doing wrong. A licensed attorney should be able to present argument better than I can. And it always helps to have extra eyes on the case.

Though the decision on my case will not set precedence, it will be persuasive. Judges often rely on what another judge or even what he himself did previously to rule the same way again, even if it does not comport with statutory text written by the legislature. It seems like attorneys who represent plaintiffs in similar cases would want other plaintiffs to prevail, paving the way for more and grander awards.