Gumora v. Brodrick
- Laura Swain
- 1:24-cv-05069
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 4
In Gumora v. Brodrick, Judge Swain ordered Joshua JJ Gumora to pay filing fees or submit an application to proceed without prepayment within 30 days.
Joshua JJ Gumora must either pay the required filing fees or submit a completed application to proceed without prepaying fees within 30 days. The case will not be formally processed or have a summons issued unless he complies, and the action will be dismissed if he does not.
What happened
Joshua JJ Gumora, who is incarcerated and representing himself, filed Gumora v. Brodrick without paying the required fees or submitting a completed application to proceed without prepaying them. He did submit authorization for deductions from his prisoner account.
Judge Swain ordered Gumora to either pay $405 or submit the completed fee-waiver application within 30 days. If he submits the application and it is approved, the $350 filing fee will be collected from his account in installments; the $55 administrative fee will not apply.
The order states that no summons will issue yet. If Gumora does not comply, the action will be dismissed. Judge Laura Taylor Swain also denied permission to proceed without prepaying fees for an appeal from this order.
The detailed version
- Gumora v. Brodrick · No. 1:24-cv-05069
- Laura Swain
- July 8, 2024
Background
Joshua JJ Gumora filed this civil action while incarcerated at OBCC Rikers Island and without a lawyer. The opinion states that he submitted a complaint and a prisoner authorization, but he did not submit a completed application to proceed without prepaying fees, commonly called an IFP application.
Fees and required filing
The court explained that filing a civil action requires either payment of $405—consisting of a $350 filing fee and a $55 administrative fee—or submission of a completed IFP application and prisoner authorization. If a prisoner’s IFP application is granted, the Prison Litigation Reform Act requires collection of the $350 filing fee through installments deducted from the prisoner’s account. The $55 administrative fee does not apply to a person granted IFP status.
Order
The court ordered Gumora to pay the $405 in fees or submit the attached completed IFP application within 30 days of the order’s date. The application must identify docket number 24-CV-5069 (LTS). No summons will issue at this time. If Gumora complies, the Clerk’s Office will process the case under its procedures. If he does not comply within the permitted time, the action will be dismissed.
Judge Laura Taylor Swain certified that an appeal from the order would not be taken in good faith and denied permission to proceed without prepaying fees for that appeal. The order also cautioned that certain future dismissals of prisoner actions may count as strikes under federal law, which can affect a prisoner’s ability to proceed without prepaying fees in later actions.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.