Sivak v. Officer of the United States
- Martinez-Olguin
- 3:24-cv-03017
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 3
In Lacey Sivak v. Zahida Perea, Judge Martinez-Olguin dismissed five cases without prejudice after Sivak missed filing-fee deadlines and denied appeal fee requests.
Lacey Sivak’s five actions were dismissed without prejudice, and his pending requests to proceed without paying appellate filing fees were denied. The cases were closed, although he may seek to reopen an individual case by paying its full filing fee.
What happened
In Lacey Sivak v. Zahida Perea, Lacey Sivak, an Idaho state prisoner representing himself, filed five actions. The court had denied his requests to proceed without paying filing fees because he had three or more prior dismissals and had not shown imminent danger of serious physical injury.
The court ordered Sivak to pay the full filing fee in each case within 14 days. Instead, he appealed. Because the Ninth Circuit had not granted permission for those interlocutory appeals, the district court retained jurisdiction. Sivak’s payment deadlines passed without payment.
Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin dismissed each action without prejudice. Sivak may ask to reopen a case by paying its full filing fee. The court also denied any pending requests to proceed without paying fees on appeal, terminated the other pending motions as moot, closed the cases, and directed the clerk not to file further documents Sivak submitted in them.
The detailed version
- Sivak v. Officer of the United States · No. 3:24-cv-03017
- Martinez-Olguin
- Dec. 23, 2024
Background
Lacey Sivak, identified by the court as an Idaho state prisoner and frequent litigant, filed the five actions representing himself. In each action, the court denied his request to proceed without paying the filing fee under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(g). That provision bars a prisoner from proceeding without prepaying the fee after three or more qualifying prior dismissals, unless the prisoner alleges a specific imminent danger of serious physical injury. The court found that Sivak had three or more prior dismissals and had not met the imminent-danger standard.
Filing-fee deadline and appeals
In each case, the court ordered Sivak to pay the full filing fee within 14 days or risk dismissal without prejudice. Sivak did not pay the fees and instead appealed the orders to the Ninth Circuit. The district court explained that an interlocutory appeal generally transfers jurisdiction over the appealed issues to the court of appeals, but that an interlocutory appeal is not considered filed until the court of appeals permits it. Because the Ninth Circuit had not granted Sivak permission to bring these appeals, the district court retained jurisdiction. The deadlines for paying the filing fees had passed.
Rulings
The court dismissed each of the five actions without prejudice. It stated that Sivak could file a motion to reopen any action after paying that action’s full filing fee; a separate full filing fee would be required for each case he wished to reopen and pursue.
The court also denied any pending motion for permission to proceed without paying the filing fee on appeal under § 1915(g), for the same reasons it had denied that status in the district court. The court noted that the Ninth Circuit would independently review the record if Sivak asked it for that status and would decide whether to grant it. The clerk was directed to terminate all other pending motions as moot, close the cases, and return without filing any further documents Sivak submitted in the closed cases.
Classification basis
This was a procedural order. The court dismissed the actions based on failure to pay required filing fees after denial of fee-waiver status; it did not decide the underlying claims.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.