Whitehead v. The Walt Disney Company

Background

Pro se plaintiff David Louis Whitehead filed a letter-motion on July 7, 2025, asking the court to consolidate this action with his recently filed action against Universal Pictures and others, identified as No. 25-CV-05433. The court treated the letter as both a statement that the cases were related and a motion for consolidation under Rule 42(a) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

Reasoning

The court concluded that the Universal Pictures action was not sufficiently related to this case under either Rule 13(a) of the Southern District of New York’s rules for assigning cases or Rule 42(a). The court stated that, even if the alleged copyrighted work in both cases was the same, the claims appeared to involve different defendants and different allegedly infringing works.

Rulings

The court denied Whitehead’s letter-motion. It also reminded him that the court had held all of his non-dispositive motions in abeyance. The court further stated that additional motions filed before resolution of the defendants’ pending motion to dismiss would be summarily denied unless they sought necessarily time-sensitive relief and appeared potentially meritorious on their face.

Judge Margaret M. Garnett certified under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(a)(3) that any appeal from the order would not be taken in good faith. The court therefore denied Whitehead fee-free appeal status for purposes of an appeal and directed the Clerk of Court to mail him a copy of the order.