Mallgren v. United States
- Laura Swain
- 1:25-cv-02656
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Mallgren v. United States, Judge Swain dismissed the action without prejudice because Mallgren filed without paying fees or obtaining required leave.
Anthony Brian Mallgren’s action was dismissed without prejudice. The court also denied him permission to proceed without paying fees for an appeal.
What happened
In Mallgren v. United States, Anthony Brian Mallgren filed a new civil action without prepaying the filing fee. The court treated this as a request to proceed without paying the fee.
A prior order barred Mallgren from filing future civil actions without paying fees unless he first obtained the court’s permission. Because he did not obtain that permission, the court dismissed this action without prejudice for violating the prior filing restriction.
Judge Laura Taylor Swain also ruled that an appeal would not be taken in good faith and denied fee-free status for an appeal. She directed the Clerk of Court to enter a civil judgment.
The detailed version
- Mallgren v. United States · No. 1:25-cv-02656
- Laura Swain
- Apr. 1, 2025
Background
Anthony Brian Mallgren filed this civil action against the United States and New York State without prepaying the filing fees. The court therefore assumed that he sought permission to proceed without paying those fees.
In an earlier proceeding, the court had barred Mallgren from filing any future civil action in the Southern District of New York without paying the filing fee unless he first obtained leave of court. The earlier court imposed that prefiling injunction because of Mallgren’s history of litigation that it characterized as frivolous, vexatious, or otherwise lacking merit in that court and other federal courts.
Ruling
Because Mallgren did not obtain leave before filing this new action without paying the filing fee, the court dismissed the action without prejudice for failure to comply with the earlier injunction. The court also certified under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(a)(3) that any appeal would not be taken in good faith and denied permission to proceed without paying fees for purposes of an appeal. The court directed the Clerk of Court to enter a civil judgment.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.