  We study the damping rate of massless Dirac fermions due to the U(1) gauge
field in (2+1)-dimensional quantum electrodynamics. In the absence of a Maxwell
term for the gauge field, the fermion damping rate
$\mathrm{Im}\Sigma(\omega,T)$ is found to diverge in both perturbative and
self-consistent results. In the presence of a Maxwell term, there is still
divergence in the perturbative results for $\mathrm{Im}\Sigma(\omega,T)$. Once
the Maxwell term is included into the self-consistent equations for fermion
self-energy and vacuum polarization functions, the fermion damping rate is free
of divergence and exhibits non-Fermi liquid behavior:
$\mathrm{Im}\Sigma(\omega,T) \propto \mathrm{max}(\sqrt{\omega},\sqrt{T})$.
