Pro Se Attorney Won’t Get Lax Pleading Standard, Ninth Cir. Says

A lawyer representing himself in a dispute with a municipal judge shouldn’t get the same liberal pleading standards as non-attorney pro se litigants, a federal appeals court said on Friday.

James Huffman, the lawyer, tried to argue that the district court should have given him a chance to amend his civil rights lawsuit to exclude federal claims before it was dismissed because it was poorly written. But, “a sophisticated attorney should not be allowed to jettison his own complaint when it is beneficial yet avoid the consequences of that renunciation,” the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said. ...