Roldan v. Waksberg
- Laura Swain
- 1:25-cv-03169
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 3
In Roldan v. Waksberg, Judge Swain denied Roldan’s applications and ruled her attempted removal of Family Court proceedings ineffective.
Brendalis Roldan and the pending Bronx County Family Court proceedings; the federal case remains governed by the earlier dismissal in its entirety without prejudice.
What happened
Brendalis Roldan filed Roldan v. Waksberg as a False Claims Act case without a lawyer. The court had warned that she could not pursue that type of case without counsel, and it dismissed the case in its entirety without prejudice after she did not obtain counsel.
Before judgment was entered, Roldan filed applications seeking, among other things, to remove Family Court proceedings, serve requests for admissions, obtain information about court staff handling her documents, and change the case into other types of proceedings. The court reviewed those filings in the now-closed case.
Judge Laura Taylor Swain denied all of Roldan’s applications. She ruled that the attempted removal was ineffective because it was filed in a closed case, denied the requests for relief from the dismissal and other requested remedies, directed the Clerk to notify the Family Court, and denied permission to appeal without paying fees.
The detailed version
- Roldan v. Waksberg · No. 1:25-cv-03169
- Laura Swain
- June 25, 2025
Background
Brendalis Roldan proceeded without a lawyer and styled this case as a qui tam action under the False Claims Act, a federal law that allows certain private plaintiffs to sue on behalf of the United States. The Court previously notified Roldan that a False Claims Act action could not be brought without counsel, that the action would be dismissed without prejudice unless she obtained counsel within 30 days, and that claims not arising under that Act should be brought separately. Roldan later filed a separate action naming many of the same defendants, and that action remained pending.
Roldan did not obtain counsel. On May 30, 2025, the Court dismissed this action in its entirety without prejudice. Before judgment was entered, she filed applications listed as ECF 7 through ECF 14.
Rulings on the Applications
The Court denied Roldan’s applications for relief.
- The attempted removal of her pending Family Court proceedings could not proceed in this action, which was originally filed under the False Claims Act and was already closed. The Court ruled that the notice purporting to remove those proceedings was ineffective and directed the Clerk to send a copy of the order to Bronx County Family Court. This ruling addressed ECF 8 through ECF 10 and ECF
- - The Court construed Roldan’s responses to the dismissal order as motions for relief under Rules 59(e) and 60(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Those motions were denied because she did not establish a basis for relief. This ruling addressed ECF 11 and ECF
- - The Court denied Roldan’s request for a detailed log of court users who handled her documents because she did not establish a basis for that relief. The Court stated that the dismissal resulted from her inability to pursue a False Claims Act action without a lawyer, not from the alleged clerical errors. This ruling addressed ECF
- - The Court denied Roldan’s requests to recharacterize the action as a petition to preserve testimony and to serve requests for admissions because the action was closed and she had not shown a basis for reconsidering the dismissal order. This ruling addressed ECF 7.
The Court also noted that no summonses had issued in the case, which was filed without the required filing fee and was subject to initial screening under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(e)(2)(B).
Disposition
The Court denied Roldan’s applications for relief, ruled that her attempted removal of the pending Family Court proceedings within this closed federal action was ineffective, directed the Clerk to enter judgment under the May 30 dismissal order, and directed the Clerk to send the order to Bronx County Family Court. The Court certified that any appeal from this order would not be taken in good faith and denied permission to appeal without paying filing fees.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.