Oliveri Doan
- Susan Van Keulen
- 3:25-cv-04915
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 2
In Nathan Oliveri Doan v. Elizabeth, Judge Breyer vacated dismissal, reopened the prisoner case, and transferred it to the Eastern District of California.
Nathan Oliveri Doan’s prisoner civil-rights case was reopened and transferred from the Northern District of California to the Eastern District of California; the merits of his claims were not decided.
What happened
Nathan Oliveri Doan v. Elizabeth concerns a prisoner’s civil-rights case challenging conditions at the San Joaquin County Jail. The court had dismissed the case after Doan did not timely file the required complaint and filing-fee materials.
Doan later filed the complaint and an application to proceed without paying the filing fee. The mailing envelope showed that he had given the documents to prison officials for mailing by July 8, making the filings timely under the prisoner-mail rule. The court also determined that the case belonged in the Eastern District of California because the relevant events occurred there.
Judge Charles R. Breyer vacated the earlier dismissal, reopened the case, and ordered the clerk to transfer it to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California.
The detailed version
- Oliveri Doan · No. 3:25-cv-04915
- Susan Van Keulen
- July 31, 2025
Background
Nathan Oliveri Doan, proceeding without a lawyer, brought a prisoner action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 challenging various conditions of confinement at the San Joaquin County Jail. On July 23, 2025, the court dismissed the action without prejudice because Doan had not filed an actual complaint on the court’s prisoner complaint form, paid the $405 filing fee, or filed an application to proceed without paying the fee by the previously ordered deadline. The clerk was directed to close the case.
Timeliness of the filings
On July 29, 2025, Doan filed a prisoner complaint and an application to proceed without paying the filing fee. The envelope containing those filings bore a postmark of July 8, 2025. Applying the prisoner-mail rule—which treats a prisoner’s filing as submitted when delivered to prison officials for mailing—the court found that the filings were timely.
Venue and ruling
The court concluded that a substantial part of the events or omissions underlying the claims occurred in the Eastern District of California and that venue therefore properly lay there. Under 28 U.S.C. § 1406(a), the court ordered the action transferred in the interest of justice to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California.
Judge Charles R. Breyer vacated the July 23 dismissal and directed the clerk to reopen and transfer the case. The order did not decide the merits of Doan’s conditions-of-confinement claims.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.