Court, Counties Curb Litigious Nebraskan

Some folks like to party. Others like to gamble. Billy Roy Tyler likes to sue.

Tyler, who describes himself in court papers as the “greatest writ-writer in the world” and “a man of great experience in court,” has sued everybody from his neighbors to the dogcatcher to the governor. He once even sued a legislative bill.

So strong is Tyler’s tendency to sue that two counties and the U.S. District Court have limited the number of lawsuits he can file.

On Friday, he was rebuked by the state’s highest court for the seemingly endless stream of legal papers.

“He’s a guy who dislikes authority,” said Linda Willard, an assistant attorney general who has defended the scores of state officials from Tyler’s legal lash.

Tyler, 45, of Omaha, is serving a seven- to 10-year term in the Nebraska State Penitentiary on drug charges and could not be reached for comment. He does not have a lawyer.

Tyler, who over the last 15 years has been in and out of confinement for everything from traffic misdemeanors to drug convictions, apparently began his unofficial legal career in the 1980s.

The targets of Tyler’s lawsuits have included a utility that threatened to cut off his service for an unpaid bill, the Humane Society in a fight over his dogs running loose, three prospective employers, jailers, Gov. Ben Nelson, Atty. Gen. Don Stenberg, the State Patrol, and even the legislative bill authorizing construction of a new state prison.

Being in and out for the last 15 years has not diminished his activity: He sued prison officials for not taking action against some inmates who broke a window.

And he has done all this with little or no money. Tyler files his lawsuits as a pauper, meaning that he does not have to pay filing fees.

In April, the Lancaster County District Court limited the number of suits Tyler could file after he initiated 88 actions in one year.

Back in 1987, the U.S. District Court restricted Tyler after he filed 113 federal lawsuits in 19 months.

The battle that wound up in the state’s high court began in 1990, when the Douglas County District Court said Tyler had filed 99 lawsuits in an eight-year period and limited him to filing just one a month unless he proved the likelihood of “immediate, extraordinary and irreparable harm.”

Tyler appealed to the state Supreme Court when the court didn’t allow him to sue over the sale of the county-owned Ak-Sar-Ben thoroughbred horse-racing track, which he claimed was “the result of pork-barrel kickback graft and fraud conflict.”

In Friday’s opinion, Supreme Court Justice John Wright upheld that decision, ruling that Tyler hadn’t proved he would suffer immediate harm from the sale.

“While there is a generally recognized constitutional right of access to the courts, courts can place restrictions on such access in order to prevent abuse of the judicial process,” Wright said.

“The ‘petitions’ filed by Mr. Tyler generally are merely scrawled on a piece of paper, are often virtually illegible, frequently contain vulgar and abusive language, and lack the most basic information necessary to state a cause of action,” said the order.

Nevertheless, some professionals admit that Tyler probably would have made a good lawyer.

“He is a very articulate fellow. Intelligent,” said Senior U.S. District Judge Warren Urbom. “He has demonstrated a capacity for legal concepts and drenching all kinds of activities with those legal concepts.”

Even so, Tyler has won only one of his federal cases: a damage award of $5 from Douglas County officials who refused to let him subscribe to adult magazines while in jail.