Russell v. Doe

What the order concerns

Mark Russell filed this civil action without paying the required fees and without submitting a completed application to proceed without prepaying fees or a prisoner authorization. The opinion says Russell is detained at the West Facility Annex on Rikers Island and is proceeding without a lawyer.

Payment or fee-waiver requirements

The court explained that filing a civil action requires $405: a $350 filing fee and a $55 administrative fee. A prisoner may ask to proceed without prepaying the fees by submitting a signed application and a prisoner authorization. If that request is granted, the $350 filing fee is collected in installments from the prisoner's account. The authorization also directs the facility to send the court certified account statements for the preceding six months. The $55 administrative fee does not apply to a person granted this fee-waiver status.

Order

Within 30 days, Russell must either pay the $405 in fees or submit the attached application and prisoner authorization, labeled with docket number 25-CV-4535 (LTS). No summons will issue at this time. If Russell complies, the Clerk's Office will process the case under its procedures. If he does not comply within the allowed 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 fee-waiver status for purposes of an appeal. The order did not address the merits of Russell's underlying claims. The court also cautioned that a later dismissal of a prisoner's federal civil action as frivolous, malicious, or for failure to state a claim may count as a strike under the federal prisoner-litigation statute.