Letters to the Editor

Dear Sir:

Dan Ringer's article, "Pro se Litigants," in the March 2000 issue of The West Virginia Lawyer, is right on the mark.

For a number of years we have served on the West Virginia Court of Claims. In our Court a majority of claimants file their claims and appear pro se. Our Rule 8 provide, in pertinent part, that "an individual claimant may appear and conduct his or her claim without counsel, if he or she is a resident of the State of West Virginia, until or unless the Court, for good cause, shall otherwise direct."

Routinely we advise the claimants of their opportunity to obtain counsel to assist them in the prosecution of their claims. In many instances we suggest to, urge or plead with the claimants to obtain counsel so that their complex questions of fact and law may be properly presented. Most of the time our entreaties fall on deaf ears. It distresses us to see the extreme prejudice resulting to those who choose to go it alone because of their inability to marshal and introduce evidence and otherwise to protect their interests.

While it is the obligation of a court to provide a litigant an impartial forum in which his or her cause of action may be heard, it is not, in our judgement, the obligation of the court to prepare or to try the case for such litigant. We submit that the encouragement of pro se litigation through the provision of forms, handbooks and the like will do more harm than good to those litigants such efforts are intended to help.

Cordially,
Robert M. Steptoe
Presiding Judge

David M. Baker
Judge

B. Hays Webb, II
Judge