I'd like to know what happened in this case too, but several of the links provided on this list didn't work, including Ross's initial Complaint, which apparently was a medical malpractice claim that he was disfigured by surgery for mouth cancer.  However, the links that did work suggest what might be part of the problem here.  First I note that federal district courts mostly use a notice type of pleading system, and only about 2% of federal cases actually get to a face-to-face trial.  Apparently, this case was one that never made it to an actual trial.

 In a court docket entry dated September 16, 2004 (filed September 17, 2004), all Judge Lefkow said was, "Hearing held for plaintiff to show cause why his case should not be dismissed pursuant to the Court's Order of July 6, 2004 (#5).  On the Court's own motion, case is hereby dismissed with prejudice for failure to state a claim upon which relief may be granted.  All pending motions are terminated." 

 The Order of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals affirming Lefkow's dismissal has more words, but still offers no comprehensible reason for dismissal, and reads even more like a slap in the face.  At least it cites a legal case, Taylor v. City of Albany, but only to the effect that "court can decide a case on motions papers and record where briefing would not be helpful and no member of the panel desires briefing or argument."  That was probably an extremely unfortunate turn of phrase for the court to have included in its Order confirming Lefkow's dismissal, especially when no other explanation was offered.

My observation is that if a pro se litigant paid the district court filing fee ($150), and then the appeals court filing fee ($250), at the very least he deserved an explanation for dismissal that the average person can understand.  If courts are going to routinely dismiss pro se cases, the public also has a right to comprehensible explanations of the reasons.  I'm a member of the public, I'd like to know what happened, and several people on this list would also like to know.  And that explanation should be more than, "no member of the panel desires briefing or argument." 

The courts may have done the right thing in this case, but if the reason was that he was bringing a medical malpractice claim, but he didn't have a medical expert witness to back up his claim, the court might have said that.  Judge Lefkow also might have said that she was dismissing the case because he had presented insufficient evidence to justify proceeding, instead of legalistic gobble-de-gook that's not true anyway, "failure to state a claim upon which relief may be granted."  Apparently the guy had a claim, that he had been disfigured in surgery.  The reason that courts resort to legalistic gobble-de-gook that's just not true, is that they need to state it that way that would justify dismissing the case on jurisdictional grounds.  At the very least, if the courts are going to accept $400 in filing fees, pro se litigants deserve an explanation that is both understandable and TRUE, not a legal fiction of convenience that is actually FALSE.  I don't particularly like listening to arguments either, but if the courts are going to take $400 from a guy who is sleeping in his car, at the very least they ought to give him his money's worth, and it ought to be more than "no member of the panel desires briefing or argument." 

 That was probably the true statement of the reason for dismissal, but it's the job of judges to listen to arguments.  If that was the real reason (that they just didn't want to do their job), at least they might have considered giving the guy his money back.  If the courts are going to hang out a shingle saying, "Justice for All", and take people's money, they ought to deliver on their implied promise.  They can't just say, "Thanks for the money, but we didn't really mean what we said, and we don't even want to hear your stupid arguments."  Courts shouldn't be surprised if some people become embittered if that's what they do.  $400 is a lot of money to some people, especially if you're sleeping in a car, and it ought to buy a day in court, or at least half an hour, which is probably all it would have taken. 

 It's actually a kind of con game to take money from someone like that, and then not even give them their day in court, and a respectful explanation that the average person could understand.  If instead of dismissing the case with a legal fiction that's not even true, Lefkow had given him his day in court, and respectfully explained to him that although she understood that he was disfigured, and her sympathy was with him, the only standard of evidence that the court could accept for a case of medical malpractice is the testimony of a medical expert, and because he didn't have that, he wasn't going to prevail, the whole story might have come out differently.  If instead of dismissing the case "with prejudice", she had explained to him that if he found a medical expert who was willing to testify who agreed with him, he could file the case again, the story might have come out differently too.  Some judges are much better at this than others, and apparently Lefkow was one of the others.  Maybe she tried to offer some kind of explanation in a preliminary hearing that apparently was actually held, but evidently it wasn't good enough, and it appears that she pre-judged the case as going nowhere and dismissed it "on her own motion", for a reason of convenience that wasn't actually true.  Judges may be overworked but that's no excuse for laziness, or taking people's money and then not delivering on an implied promise.  Dealing with people with serious complaints is rarely pleasant, but that's the job of a judge, and if they don't want to do the job, they should resign.  

 I don't like a lot of the medical malpractice cases that I hear about either, and to an extent I have sympathy with Lefkow for just brushing the guy off.  But I'd also say that some doctors are much better than others too, and there really are some surgeons who are basically butchers.  Even if he didn't have a medical expert willing to testify (and like lawyers, most doctors don't like to testify against each other), the guy probably knew his case better than anyone, and he might have been right that he had been unnecessarily disfigured by a callous surgeon who shouldn't be allowed to call himself a doctor.  It also might have cost the guy his job, and his livelihood, when that might have been avoided by a more responsible surgeon.  Without knowing the details, it's hard to say whether or not he had a real complaint.  But that's the whole point of a day in court, to allow a controversy like this to be fully and openly aired and dispassionately resolved, instead of the alternative, which is to return to the Wild West and resolve it with guns.  And it is critical for judges and lawyers to understand that it's not enough for the courts to just "get it right", but it is also necessary for people to understand WHY a case was resolved the way it was, or the justice system hasn't yet done its job of replacing resolution of controversies by violence, with resolution by rationality. 

P.S. I'm not a lawyer, but have considerable federal court