Bonilla v. Kolpacoff

Background

Steven Wayne Bonilla, a state prisoner, filed numerous nearly identical complaints without a lawyer under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, the federal civil-rights statute for claims against state actors. The complaints named various federal judges, state judges, and state courts as defendants. The court said Bonilla sought relief concerning his underlying conviction or the way his other state and federal cases had been handled.

The court also noted that Bonilla has a pending federal petition challenging his imprisonment in the same court, with appointed counsel, and is represented by counsel in state-court proceedings. The opinion cited Bonilla's history of filing similar cases.

Ruling

The court held that Bonilla was disqualified from proceeding without paying the filing fee under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(g), unless he showed that he was in imminent danger of serious physical injury when he filed the complaints. The court found that the allegations did not make that showing, so he could not proceed without paying the fee.

The court further stated that, even if an application to proceed without paying the fee were granted, the lawsuits would be barred under the legal rules identified in Heck v. Humphrey, Younger v. Harris, Demos v. U.S. District Court, or Mullis v. U.S. Bankruptcy Court. The opinion did not decide the underlying merits of Bonilla's claims.

The court dismissed the cases with prejudice. It directed the clerk to terminate all pending motions and close the cases, and to return without filing any further documents Bonilla submitted in the closed cases. The court also stated that the repetitive and allegedly frivolous filings did not provide a basis to question the undersigned judge's impartiality.

Classification

This is a procedural order because the court dismissed the cases based on filing-fee eligibility and other threshold legal bars without deciding whether Bonilla's underlying claims were legally valid.