{"id":191,"date":"2006-10-13T10:21:39","date_gmt":"2006-10-13T14:21:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/shlep\/2006\/10\/13\/coordinated-pro-se-tax-haters-clogging-"},"modified":"2006-10-13T10:27:28","modified_gmt":"2006-10-13T14:27:28","slug":"coordinated-pro-se-tax-haters-clogging-up-courts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/2006\/10\/13\/coordinated-pro-se-tax-haters-clogging-up-courts\/","title":{"rendered":"coordinated pro se tax-haters clogging up courts"},"content":{"rendered":"
An article in today’s Legal Times<\/em> discusses a spate of coordinated, mostly-pro-se<\/em> “tax revolt” cases — 108 of them —\u00a0that have been filed in federal district courts across the country since last Fall.\u00a0\u00a0 (Law.com, “Tax Revolt<\/strong>: Plaintiffs File Coordinated Cases Against IRS<\/font><\/a>,” Oct. 13, 2006)\u00a0<\/font> Reporter Emma Schwartz writes that “The effort hasn’t seen much success; so far, 40 have been dismissed because of the plaintiffs’ failure to exhaust their administrative remedies. But the cases managed to pique curiosity in judges’ chambers.”\u00a0 It appears that Schwartz has unearthed the mystery man behind the suits, “Chicago-based anti-tax activist George Pragovich”.<\/font> <\/font>Although most of the\u00a0litigants have refused to say who is behind their judicial\u00a0tax revolt, the wife of plaintiff Paul Broward is quoted saying that Pragovich\u00a0is “one of the major coordinators of what we’re doing. I just fill out the forms and send them in.”\u00a0 <\/font><\/div>\n
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\"checkedBox\"\u00a0I’m sure that some observers are going to point to these cases as another good reason to require lawyes for all litigants in federal court — using the legal fee as a deterrent to baseless or harassing suits, with lawyers as toll-taking gatekeepers.\u00a0 I believe that dealing with such pro se<\/em> suits is\u00a0an appropriate\u00a0“cost” of ensuring the fundamental right of Americans to represent themselves in court.\u00a0 As stated in our prior post<\/a> on frivolous pro se<\/em> litigants, the proprer approach is for courts to use their powers to quickly dispatch cases that do not belong before them — either because they are frivolous or premature.\u00a0\u00a0 Our Government knows how to accommodate First Amendment-type rights into the operation of its\u00a0agencies.\u00a0\u00a0 We can’t let those who abuse such rights become an excuse to limit appropriate behavior by the vast majority of Americans.\u00a0<\/font><\/div>\n

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An article in today’s Legal Times discusses a spate of coordinated, mostly-pro-se “tax revolt” cases — 108 of them —\u00a0that have been filed in federal district courts across the country since last Fall.\u00a0\u00a0 (Law.com, “Tax Revolt: Plaintiffs File Coordinated Cases Against IRS,” Oct. 13, 2006)\u00a0 Reporter Emma Schwartz writes that “The effort hasn’t seen much […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":437,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[991,900],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-items","category-viewpoint"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/437"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/shlep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}