Tennessee Business Litigation Law Blog

An opinion released a couple of days ago from the eastern section of the Court of Appeals highlights the ongoing disagreement about how pro se litigants should be treated by the Courts.  The case, C&W Asset Acquisition v. Oggs, was a simple breach of contract case involving whether the defendant had failed to make payment on moneys advanced to him under a line of credit. 

Mr. Oggs, proceeding pro se, filed an Answer in which he denied owing the debt, stating that he “had no knowledge of the same.”  Subsequently, Mr. Oggs was served a request for admission asking him to admit that an attached balance sheet correctly reflected the charges and credits under his credit agreement with the Plaintiff.  Mr. Oggs did not respond, prompting the Plaintiff to file a motion to have this fact deemed admitted.  The Court denied Plaintiff’s motion and stated that Mr. Oggs would be allowed to respond “in court.”  It is unclear what response, if any, Mr. Oggs ever made to this request for admission, but at trial, he simply testified again that “he had no recollection of the debt and thereby denied owing Plaintiff.”  The Court ultimately held that the Plaintiff had failed to carry its burden of proof and dismissed the case against Mr. Oggs.  The dismissal was affirmed by the eastern section on appeal.

However, Judge Swiney dissented from the appellate opinion and embarked on a sharp criticism of what he viewed as the unfair advantage given to Mr. Oggs because he was a pro se litigant:

Putting aside for now Mr. Oggs’ trial testimony and looking solely at his answer, I am completely at a loss as to what the plaintiff was suppose to have done. Applying the majority’s reasoning, Mr. Oggs, solely because he is a pro se litigant, could in his answer say only that he does not know about or owe the debt and then be allowed to show up at trial, after first having been excused from responding to requests for admission, and raise any of the affirmative defenses set forth in Rule 8.03. Perhaps what Mr. Oggs meant when he said he did not owe the debt was that he had paid it; perhaps that there was duress; perhaps that estoppel or fraud applied; perhaps that a statute of limitations or statute of repose applied; perhaps that some other statute such as truth in lending applied. Under the majority’s decision, plaintiff was required to come to court ready to address whatever possible or potential non-plead affirmative defenses Mr. Oggs as the pro se defendant might for the first time raise during the trial. Such a result totally emasculates Rule 8.03 of the Tennessee Rules of Civil Procedure…

 

Respectfully, I believe this is a situation where the pro se litigant was unfairly advantaged, solely because he was a pro se litigant, both at trial and now before this Court. Both the Trial Court and now the majority in their attempts to insure that Mr. Oggs as a pro se litigant received “fair and equal treatment” have instead allowed “him an unfair advantage because he represents himself.” Frazier, 2006 WL 2506706, at *3. I respectfully suggest that the one lesson to be learned by lawyers and future litigants from the majority’s opinion is that if you find yourself in a situation similar to Mr. Oggs, do not hire a lawyer but instead proceed pro se so that the Rules of Civil Procedure will not be applied to you, and that everything you say in that lawsuit will be construed to mean what it was you might have said as opposed to what you actually did say.

 Read the majority’s opinion here.  Judge Swiney’s dissent is available here.