Fuqua v. United Parcel Service, Inc.
- Haywood Gilliam
- 4:19-cv-05401-HSG
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 3
In Fuqua v. United Parcel Service, Inc., Judge Gilliam denied counsel, terminated an extension request as moot in part, denied it in part, and set an amended-complaint deadline.
Tammi Fuqua, who was representing herself, was denied appointed counsel and received a new deadline of August 25, 2023, to file an amended complaint. United Parcel Service, Inc. remained the defendant in the case.
What happened
In Fuqua v. United Parcel Service, Inc., Tammi Fuqua had not filed the amended complaint the court previously required. She instead asked the court to appoint a lawyer and to extend her filing deadline.
The court found that Fuqua’s lack of financial resources favored appointing counsel, but that she had not shown efforts to find a lawyer and had not shown that her claims were likely to succeed at that stage. The court set August 25, 2023, as the new deadline for an amended complaint and warned that failing to meet it could lead to dismissal without further notice.
Judge Haywood S. Gilliam, Jr. denied the request for appointed counsel. He terminated the extension motion as moot in part because the court set a new deadline and denied it in part to the extent it also sought appointed counsel.
The detailed version
- Fuqua v. United Parcel Service, Inc. · No. 4:19-cv-05401-HSG
- Haywood Gilliam
- July 21, 2023
Background
Tammi Fuqua was representing herself in an employment-discrimination case against United Parcel Service, Inc. The court had previously required her to file an amended complaint by March 14, 2023, and had warned that failing to do so could result in dismissal. As of this order, she had not filed the amended complaint. Instead, she moved for appointment of counsel and for an extension of time.
The court also directed that any amended complaint address defects identified in earlier orders and explain how Fuqua’s current claims differed from claims she appeared to have settled in an earlier round of the case. The new deadline for filing the amended complaint was August 25, 2023. The court again warned that failure to meet the deadline would very likely result in dismissal without further notice.
Motion to Appoint Counsel
The court explained that there is no constitutional right to appointed counsel for employment-discrimination claims. A federal civil-rights statute, however, allows a court to appoint a lawyer for a Title VII complainant in appropriate circumstances. The court considered three factors: Fuqua’s financial resources, her efforts to obtain counsel, and whether her claims appeared likely to have merit.
Fuqua was allowed to proceed without paying filing fees, so the court found that her financial resources favored appointment. But she did not describe any efforts to obtain either retained or free legal counsel. The court therefore found that the second factor weighed against appointment.
The court also could not conclude at that stage that Fuqua’s claims were likely to have merit. It relied on deficiencies identified in earlier court filings that Fuqua had not corrected and on uncertainty about whether the apparent settlement of her earlier case barred all or substantially all of the claims in this case. The court found that the third factor also weighed against appointment.
The court denied Fuqua’s motion for appointment of counsel.
Motion for Extension of Time
The court terminated as moot in part Fuqua’s motion for an extension because it set a new deadline for filing the amended complaint. To the extent the motion also requested appointment of counsel, the court denied that request for the same reasons stated above.
Disposition
The court denied the motion for appointment of counsel. It terminated as moot in part and denied in part the motion for an extension of time. The order did not decide the underlying employment-discrimination claims.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.