Scales v. Apple Incorporation
- Laura Swain
- 1:24-cv-01824
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 3
In Scales v. Apple Incorporation, Judge Swain denied William Scales’s motion to reconsider dismissal and denied fee-free status for an appeal.
William Scales’s request to undo the earlier dismissal was denied. The order also denied him permission to appeal without paying fees. The opinion names Tranz Technologies and Apple Incorporation as defendants but does not impose a separate ruling on them in this order.
What happened
In Scales v. Apple Incorporation, William Scales filed letters asking for more time while seeking a lawyer and stating that he had requested a waiver of filing fees. The court had previously dismissed his complaint because he had not paid the fees or asked for them to be waived.
The court treated the letters as a motion under Rule 60(b), which allows a court to provide relief from an order or judgment in specified circumstances. It found that the Clerk’s Office had not received Scales’s fee-waiver request and that seeking a lawyer did not show the unusual circumstances required for relief.
Judge Swain denied the Rule 60(b) motion. She also certified that an appeal from the order would not be taken in good faith and denied Scales permission to proceed without paying fees for that appeal.
The detailed version
- Scales v. Apple Incorporation · No. 1:24-cv-01824
- Laura Swain
- Feb. 7, 2025
Background
William Scales filed the action without a lawyer. On June 21, 2024, the court dismissed the complaint because Scales had not paid the fees required to bring a new civil action or requested that the fees be waived. On August 7, 2024, Scales filed letters asking for more time to respond because he was seeking counsel and stating that he had filed a fee-waiver request.
The court interpreted the letters as a motion for relief from the earlier dismissal under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b). The court also addressed whether it had authority to decide the motion after Scales filed a notice of appeal and the Clerk’s Office transferred the action to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Because Scales filed the letters before the electronic transfer, the court concluded that it retained authority to rule on the motion.
Court’s analysis
Rule 60(b) lists grounds for relief from an order or judgment, including mistake, newly discovered evidence, fraud or misconduct, a void judgment, satisfaction or reversal of a judgment, and other reasons justifying relief. Motions based on the first three grounds generally must be filed within one year.
The court concluded that Scales had not shown that any of the first five Rule 60(b) grounds applied. To the extent he argued that the court had erred because he had submitted a fee-waiver request, the court rejected that argument because the Clerk’s Office had never received the request.
The court also rejected relief under Rule 60(b)(6), which applies only for reasons different from those listed in the first five provisions and requires extraordinary circumstances. The court held that Scales’s effort to obtain counsel did not amount to extraordinary circumstances.
Disposition
The court denied Scales’s letters, construed as a Rule 60(b) motion for reconsideration. It also certified under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(a)(3) that an appeal from the order would not be taken in good faith and denied permission to proceed without paying fees for that appeal.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.