Opinion
No. CIV S-05-0682 MCE GGH P.
January 7, 2008
ORDER
Plaintiff, a state prisoner proceeding pro se, seeks relief pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983. Pending before the court is plaintiff's May 24, 2007, motion for attorney's fees, to which defendant has filed an opposition.
In this civil rights action, which now proceeds as to plaintiff's claims in his original complaint, filed April 8, 2005, only against defendant Campbell, plaintiff seeks $600.00 in attorney's fees citing, as the sole basis for his motion, Cal. Penal Code §§ 987.2 and 987.3. Motion, p. 1. This motion is wholly inappropriate for more than one reason.
In the first place, plaintiff is not an attorney and is therefore not entitled to attorney's fees. This is the so, even if the pro se litigant in a civil rights action prevails, which in this case, plaintiff has yet to do. Gonzalez v. Kangas, 814 F.2d 1411 (9th Cir. 1987) (pro se prisoner seeking award of attorney fees in civil rights action wherein he was successful is not entitled to award of attorney's fees). In the second place, as defendant points out, the statutes on which plaintiff relies are state statutes relating to attorneys for indigent defendants in criminal, not civil, actions. Opposition, p. 1. Plaintiff's specific emphasis on Cal. Penal Code § 987.2(g)(2), which concerns a subsequent state court's discretion in certain circumstances to appoint the same counsel for a defendant first charged with a criminal offense in another county and represented in the earlier case by that counsel, is particularly puzzling and without any application whatsoever to this civil rights action filed by a pro se prisoner litigant in federal court.
Accordingly, IT IS ORDERED that plaintiff's wholly meritless motion for attorney's fees, filed on May 24, 2007, is denied.