Saunders v. Cardali
- Laura Swain
- 1:24-cv-01905
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Saunders v. Cardali, Judge Swain dismissed Saunders’s complaint without prejudice because he did not sign his fee-waiver application.
Marvin Saunders’s complaint was dismissed without prejudice because he did not submit the required signature page for his application to proceed without paying the filing fee. The court also denied fee-waiver status for an appeal.
What happened
In Saunders v. Cardali, the court required Marvin Saunders to submit signature pages for his complaint and application to proceed without paying filing fees. The court warned that failing to do so would lead to dismissal.
Saunders submitted the signature page for his complaint, but he did not submit the signature page for his fee-waiver application. The court later resent its earlier order, but Saunders still did not provide the missing signature page.
Judge Laura Taylor Swain dismissed the complaint without prejudice. She also denied fee-waiver status for any appeal, finding that an appeal would not be taken in good faith, and directed the clerk to enter judgment.
The detailed version
- Saunders v. Cardali · No. 1:24-cv-01905
- Laura Swain
- June 11, 2024
Background
Marvin Saunders filed a complaint and an application to proceed without paying the filing fee. The court’s March 20, 2024 order directed Saunders to submit the signature page for each document within 30 days because neither document had been signed. The order warned that failure to comply would result in dismissal.
On April 5, 2024, the court received the signature page for Saunders’s complaint, but not the signature page for his fee-waiver application. On May 2, 2024, the court resent the March 20 order to Saunders.
Ruling
Because Saunders had not filed the signature page for his fee-waiver application, the court dismissed the complaint without prejudice. This means the order did not bar refiling, although the opinion does not state what additional steps would be required for any new filing.
The court also certified under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(a)(3) that any appeal would not be taken in good faith and denied fee-waiver status for purposes of an appeal. The court directed the clerk to enter judgment.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.