Case: Farmer v. Haas

This case is closely related to Farmer v. Brennan, in which the plaintiff sued prison officials with the Federal Bureau of Prisons under the Eighth Amendment. Litigation in the lower court was identical across Brennan and Haas. Following litigation in Farmer v. Brennan, the Seventh Circuit reversed the district court’s grant of summary judgment for the defendants in an unpublished order submitted on March 10, 1991. The district court conducted a trial which produced a verdict for the defendants, and the plaintiff appealed.

In this appeal, the plaintiff raised only the question whether the district court should have granted her motion to request a lawyer to represent her at her trial. In its opinion published on April 2, 1993, the Seventh Circuit rejected the plaintiff’s argument. 990 F.2d 319. The plaintiff asked the court to appoint a lawyer before Jackson v. County of Maclean was decided, so the court did not apply the threshold requirement established in that case. Rather, the Seventh Circuit panel reviewed the district court’s decision for reasonableness and found that it was not unreasonable. 

First, the court noted that the plaintiff had litigated for three years before requesting counsel and had already pursued a successful appeal—that is, Farmer v. Brennan. Likewise, the court agreed with the district court’s perception that the trial was likely to be a straightforward swearing contest, with few of the “legal issues [and] pitfalls” that might frustrate the ordinary pro se litigant. Finally, the court reviewed the trial transcript and thought that it disclosed “a shrewd cross-examination by [the plaintiff] of one of the defendants.” For these reasons, the court did not think that this case was one of those extreme cases “in which it should have been plain beyond reasonable doubt before the trial began that the difficulty of the issues relative to the capabilities of the litigant would make it impossible for him to obtain any sort of justice without the aid of a lawyer and he could not procure a lawyer on his own.” Thus, the Seventh Circuit affirmed the district court’s decision not to appoint counsel at trial for the plaintiff.

The plaintiff appealed to the Supreme Court, which refused to hear the case in an order published on November 8, 1993.