Parkes v. Blumenfeld Development Group, LTD
- Laura Swain
- 1:24-cv-10084
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Parkes v. Blumenfeld, Judge Swain dismissed a duplicate lawsuit without prejudice to a pending identical case and denied fee-free status for an appeal.
Tiffany Anne Parkes’s duplicate action was dismissed, while her identical action under docket number 25-CV-0074 (ER) remained pending. Blumenfeld Development Group, LTD and FirstService Residential, Inc. were defendants in both actions, according to the opinion.
What happened
Parkes v. Blumenfeld Development Group, LTD involved Tiffany Anne Parkes’s lawsuit alleging that Blumenfeld Development Group, LTD and FirstService Residential, Inc. violated her rights. She filed the complaint without paying the required filing fee or submitting an application to proceed without paying fees.
Parkes later filed an identical complaint with the filing fee in another case, docket number 25-CV-0074 (ER), which was pending before another judge. Because this action raised the same claims, the court found that litigating both cases would serve no useful purpose.
Judge Laura Taylor Swain dismissed this action as duplicative of docket number 25-CV-0074 (ER), without prejudice to Parkes’s pending case. The court also denied fee-free status for any appeal and directed the Clerk of Court to enter judgment.
The detailed version
- Parkes v. Blumenfeld Development Group, LTD · No. 1:24-cv-10084
- Laura Swain
- Feb. 13, 2025
Background
Tiffany Anne Parkes, who represented herself, sued Blumenfeld Development Group, LTD and FirstService Residential, Inc., alleging that the defendants violated her rights. On December 31, 2024, she filed the complaint without paying the $405 civil filing fee and without submitting an application to proceed without paying fees. The court later directed her to either pay the fee or submit that application, but the opinion states that she did not respond.
On January 3, 2025, Parkes filed an identical complaint and paid the $405 filing fee. The Clerk of Court opened that case under docket number 25-CV-0074 (ER), issued summonses, and the case was pending before Judge Edgardo Ramos. The court stated that the two actions raised the same claims and that no useful purpose would be served by litigating the duplicate action.
Ruling
The court dismissed this action as duplicative of docket number 25-CV-0074 (ER), without prejudice to Parkes’s pending case. The court 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 Parkes permission to appeal without paying fees. The Clerk of Court was directed to enter judgment in this action.
Classification
This is a procedural order because the court dismissed the duplicate case without deciding the underlying allegations that the defendants violated Parkes’s rights.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.