Rodriguez v. The City of New York
- Laura Swain
- 1:25-cv-05259
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 5
In Rodriguez v. The City of New York, Judge Swain ordered Andres Rodriguez to pay fees or submit corrected forms within 30 days.
Andres Rodriguez must either pay $405 or submit the required application and corrected prisoner authorization within 30 days. The case will be dismissed if he does not comply, and no summons will issue unless he does.
What happened
Rodriguez v. The City of New York concerns Andres Rodriguez’s federal civil action, which he filed without a lawyer while incarcerated at Clinton Correctional Facility. The opinion does not address the claims’ merits.
Rodriguez filed his complaint without paying the required fees or submitting a completed application to proceed without prepaying fees. His prisoner authorization allowed collection of only $150, rather than the required $350 filing fee.
Judge Swain ordered Rodriguez, within 30 days, either to pay $405 in fees or submit the attached application and corrected prisoner authorization. No summons will issue yet, and the court said the action will be dismissed if he does not comply; it also denied permission to appeal without prepaying fees.
The detailed version
- Rodriguez v. The City of New York · No. 1:25-cv-05259
- Laura Swain
- June 30, 2025
Background
Andres Rodriguez filed this civil action without a lawyer while incarcerated at Clinton Correctional Facility. The opinion identifies the defendants in the caption as The City of New York and other defendants, but it does not identify the other defendants in the text provided.
A prisoner filing a civil action must either pay the required fees or apply to proceed without prepaying them. The court stated that the total required payment is $405: a $350 filing fee and a $55 administrative fee. If the court grants a prisoner’s application to proceed without prepaying fees, the $350 filing fee must still be collected in installments from the prisoner’s account; the $55 administrative fee does not apply to a person granted that status.
Deficiency in the Filing
Rodriguez submitted his complaint without the filing fees or a completed application to proceed without prepaying fees. He did submit a prisoner authorization, but it authorized collection of only $150 from his account instead of the full $350 filing fee. The required authorization also concerns sending the court certified copies of the prisoner’s account statements for the previous six months.
Order
The court directed Rodriguez, within 30 days of June 30, 2025, either to pay the $405 in fees or to submit the attached application to proceed without prepaying fees and the attached prisoner authorization. The documents must identify docket number 1:25-CV-5259 (LTS).
No summons will issue at this time. If Rodriguez complies, the case will be processed under the Clerk’s Office procedures. If he does not comply within the allowed time, the action will be dismissed. The court also certified that an appeal from this order would not be taken in good faith and denied permission to appeal without prepaying fees. The court cautioned that certain dismissals of prisoner actions can count as strikes under the federal prisoner-litigation statute, but this order did not decide whether Rodriguez’s claims are legally valid.
Read the full 5-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.