4th Circuit expands ‘grace’ for self-represented plaintiffs, revives Montgomery police lawsuit

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Siding with an arrestee who alleged excessive force by two Montgomery County Police officers, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled Wednesday that federal judges should be more lenient when self-represented litigants incorrectly fill out the top of court-issued complaint forms.

The three-judge panel found that although pro se litigant Patrick Nichols only listed one arresting officer as a defendant in the caption of his amended complaint, the body of the filing made clear that two officers were being sued. In such cases, federal district court judges “must help remedy the error,” the court found.

“When the body of a pro se complaint makes it clear that an additional party is intended as a defendant, the district court must act accordingly,” Fourth Circuit Judge Roger Gregory wrote in the published opinion, finding that the amended complaint should have put the second officer on notice that he was also a defendant.

Reviving the civil rights lawsuit for further proceedings, the appeals court also found that U.S. District Judge Brendan A. Hurson erroneously granted a motion to dismiss the civil rights complaint, finding that Nichols, 61, had sufficiently alleged the two officers used unreasonable force during a 2022 arrest.

Nichols, who filed the brutality case in U.S. District Court for Maryland while incarcerated, wrote in the complaints that the two Montgomery County officers had beaten him, broke his arm and made him fear for his life during a March 24, 2022, arrest. The lawmen had made the stop due to an open warrant for Nichols’ arrest on theft, forgery and burglary charges.

In his first complaint, Nichols identified an officer who “slam[ed] me to the ground and use[d] force for no reason” as “P.O.3 N. Bumgarner” but also wrote that “another officer had his knee on my throat,” preventing Nichols from breathing. After his first complaint was dismissed for not providing enough information, Nichols filed an amended complaint in which he identified the second officer as “P.O.3 Schmidt” in the body. He only listed Bumgarner as a defendant in the case caption.

The appeals court panel found that Nichols had filled out the court-issued complaint form “as an untrained, lay person would,” and the fact that he didn’t include Schmidt in the caption as well “should not have prevented an otherwise potentially meritorious claim from proceeding against both Officers who injured him.” They cited opinions from the 10th and 9th circuits that favored leniency regarding case captions in pro se cases.

“Today, we extend similar grace to pro se civil rights plaintiffs who rely on complaint forms provided by the district court,” Gregory wrote.

The panel noted that the trial court never acknowledged Schmidt as a defendant, other than a routine order early in the case about serving the “defendants” with the lawsuit. Hurson did not raise the issue in either opinion dismissing the case, treating the matter as a lawsuit only against the first officer.

The district court “should have either afforded Nichols the opportunity to add Schmidt to the caption of his complaint” or instructed the Office of the County Attorney to serve both officers, the panel found.

Spokespeople for Montgomery County did not return a request for comment. The officers’ employment status is unclear.

Nichols was represented in the appeal by the Appellate Litigation Clinic at the Duke University School of Law on a pro bono basis. The panel of judges commended Duke Law student Christian H. Ross “for his excellent oral advocacy” in the matter. They also noted that the district court “may also wish to consider appointing pro bono counsel to represent Nichols on remand.”

This story has been updated.