Pro se "RICO" case against CA mandatory vaccination law dismissed

[Stan]

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit that alleged that the State of California exceeded its powers when it passed a law removing all but medical exemptions to mandatory vaccination laws. In June 2015, California Governor Jerry Brown signed SB 277 into law, removing the ability of parents to claim religious belief exemptions to otherwise mandatory vaccination laws.  In August […]

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[Gregory Matthews]

A fundamental issue in that case was that it was pro se.  IOW, the case was tried by a plaintiff who was NOT an experienced trial attorney (probably not even an attorney).  The description of the efforts of the plaintiffs clearly suggests that they did not understand what they were doing.

I once spoke to an experienced trial attorney who defends governmental agencies against lawsuits.  He told me that when he is facing a plaintiff who has filed a pro se action his fee to the governmental agency  increases by one-half to twice his normal fee because he has to respond to so much junk. 

Plaintiffs will often lose a case simply due to inexperience.   The classic  example of this was the Katcoff v. Marsh (Originally Katcoff v. Alexander) filed  if my memory is correct about 1980.  In that case two Harvard law students, working on a class project, filed a Federal lawsuit against the U.S. Army.  Yes, they were granted standing!  Yes, it did cost both the Army  and the Department of Justice a large sum of money to defend the case.

In my opinion, a major part of why they lost the lawsuit was due to the fact that they failed to ask the right question in the Interrogatories, which I have read.

Further, I once acted pro se before a judge.  That was a learning experience which taught me that probably an experienced trial attorney could have won the case.