Waterman v. Fourth Lenox Terrace Associates LLC
- Laura Swain
- 1:25-cv-06151
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Waterman v. Fourth Lenox Terrace, Judge Swain ordered pro se plaintiffs to pay fees or file fee-waiver applications before considering their emergency-relief motion.
Rory Waterman and Marniqua Tompkins must either pay the required $405 in fees or each submit a signed application to proceed without prepaying fees within 30 days, or the action will be dismissed. Their preliminary-injunction motion will not be decided until that requirement is addressed.
What happened
In Waterman v. Fourth Lenox Terrace Associates LLC, Rory Waterman and Marniqua Tompkins filed a case seeking emergency relief. They submitted the complaint by email but did not each submit a signed application to proceed without paying court fees or say they would pay the fees.
The court ordered each plaintiff, within 30 days, either to pay $405 in filing and administrative fees or submit a completed and signed fee-waiver application. The court will decide their request for a preliminary injunction after the fees are paid or the applications are approved. No summons will issue yet, and the case will be dismissed if the plaintiffs do not comply.
Judge Laura Taylor Swain also ruled that an appeal would not be taken in good faith and denied fee-waiver status for an appeal.
The detailed version
- Waterman v. Fourth Lenox Terrace Associates LLC · No. 1:25-cv-06151
- Laura Swain
- July 30, 2025
Background
Rory Waterman and Marniqua Tompkins, appearing without lawyers, brought this action seeking emergency relief. They filed the complaint by emailing it to the court’s designated address for new cases. The opinion states that they did not each submit a completed and signed application to proceed without prepaying fees, and they did not indicate that they intended to pay the required fees.
Order
The court ordered the plaintiffs, within 30 days of the order, to do one of two things: pay $405 in fees, consisting of a $350 filing fee and a $55 administrative fee, or each complete and submit an application to proceed without prepaying fees. The court explained that such an application is commonly called an application to proceed in forma pauperis, or IFP.
The court deferred ruling on the plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction until they paid the fees or the court granted their applications to proceed without prepaying fees. No summons would issue at that time. If the plaintiffs complied, the Clerk’s Office would process the case under its procedures; if they did not comply within the allowed time, the action would be dismissed.
Appeal ruling and classification
The court certified that any appeal from the order would not be taken in good faith and denied IFP status for purposes of an appeal. This was a procedural order addressing payment of filing fees and applications to proceed without prepaying fees; it did not decide the merits of the plaintiffs’ claims or their request for emergency relief.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.