Overlawyered: Chronicling The High Cost Of Our Legal System

A “fixture” in Gotham courthouses

Michael Melnitzky, whose wife filed for divorce in 1994, “has sued virtually everyone involved: one of his former lawyers, his wife’s lawyer, three banks, five judges and a psychiatrist appointed by the court to evaluate his mental health. In unrelated cases, he has sued a neighbor, a thrift shop, the city and his former employer. […]

Michael Melnitzky, whose wife filed for divorce in 1994, “has sued virtually everyone involved: one of his former lawyers, his wife’s lawyer, three banks, five judges and a psychiatrist appointed by the court to evaluate his mental health. In unrelated cases, he has sued a neighbor, a thrift shop, the city and his former employer. And he has almost always lost.” “I used to be an art restorer,“ says Melnitzky, a pro se litigant. “Now I’m a litigator. If you’re going to attack me or assault me on a legal front, and I don’t hit back, I would feel dishonorable with myself.” (Ray Rivera, “The Marriage Lasted 10 Years. The Lawsuits? 13 Years, and Counting”, New York Times, Feb. 19; Above the Law, Feb. 20).

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4 Comments

  • So, pro se is Latin for ‘nutjob’, right?

    • By Peter

  • He’s right, those watches are his and they shouldn’t be sold. The original trial judge seemed to be acting like that just because he was representing himself. The ex-wife should just let him have whats his.

    • By natalie

  • Why criticize Melnitzky, when the cases should never have been filed, nor allowed to proceed? He’s not the problem, it’s the lawyers and judges!!

    • By Dick

  • Melnitzky is a pro se outlier. As I stated in a post at shlep this week,

    [The] rather small group of “fixated” or “obsessed” pro se litigants clearly raises far trickier problems in docket management and courtroom control and fairness than the everyday self-represented litigant, who appears in courthouses across the nation in tens of thousands of lawsuits each year. The typical pro se litigant has neither the time nor the capacity to manipulate the court with selective presentation of the law based on extensive research and deep knowledge of the issues.

    Americans have the right to represent themselves in court and to have fair access to justice — otherwise, we would truly be overlawyered and subjected to a lawyer tax on justice. The NYT article did not help the public understand the important issue that it raised: “how far to ease the rules [of procedure] to help the self-represented while remaining fair to the party with counsel.” My posting lists some materials that present the topic far more usefully.