Whitfield v. Operation
- Colleen McMahon
- 1:20-cv-07725
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 4
In Demitrius Whitfield v. Operation, Judge McMahon denied Whitfield’s request to reopen his closed case because his motion was untimely and unsupported.
Demitrius Whitfield, whose motion to reopen the closed action was denied and whose request to proceed without paying fees on appeal was also denied.
What happened
Demitrius Whitfield v. Operation began in 2020, when Whitfield filed the case without a lawyer and asked to waive the filing fee. The court ordered him to submit a corrected fee-waiver application or pay the filing fee, warning that the case would be dismissed if he did not comply. He did not comply, and the court dismissed the complaint without prejudice.
More than four years later, Whitfield asked the court to reopen the case and send it to the Supreme Court. The court treated that request as a motion seeking relief from the earlier judgment under a federal court rule. It found that the request was filed too late for several possible grounds and did not show the extraordinary circumstances required for the remaining ground he could invoke.
Judge McMahon denied the motion to reopen and directed the clerk to close the case. She also denied Whitfield permission to proceed without paying fees on any appeal, finding that an appeal would not be taken in good faith.
The detailed version
- Whitfield v. Operation · No. 1:20-cv-07725
- Colleen McMahon
- Oct. 15, 2025
Background
Demitrius Whitfield filed this action without a lawyer and sought permission to proceed without paying the filing fee. The court directed him to submit an amended application for that fee waiver or pay the then-required $400 filing fee within 30 days. The order warned that failure to comply would result in dismissal.
Whitfield did not submit the amended application or pay the fee. The court dismissed the complaint without prejudice on November 4, 2020, and entered a civil judgment that day. In January 2021, Whitfield sent a letter stating that he was detained on Rikers Island and asking for a copy of the docket. The clerk sent the docket to the address Whitfield provided, but the mailing was returned as undeliverable. Whitfield did not contact the court again until October 2025.
Motion to Reopen
On October 9, 2025, Whitfield filed a motion, a declaration asking to reopen the matter and forward it to the Supreme Court, and a new application to proceed without paying the filing fee. The court interpreted the motion as a request for relief from a judgment or order under Rule 60(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
Rule 60(b) lists several grounds for relief, including mistake or excusable neglect, newly discovered evidence, opposing-party misconduct, a void judgment, satisfaction or discharge of a judgment, and other extraordinary circumstances. Requests based on the first three grounds must be filed within one year after the judgment or order.
The court held that Whitfield’s October 2025 filing came almost five years after the 2020 dismissal and was therefore untimely under the first three grounds. It also found that his submissions did not show that the judgment was void or had been satisfied, released, or discharged, so relief was unavailable under the fourth and fifth grounds.
Relief under Rule 60(b)(6), the catchall provision, requires a filing within a reasonable time and extraordinary circumstances. The court concluded that Whitfield’s submissions did not demonstrate extraordinary circumstances. The court therefore denied the motion under Rule 60(b).
Disposition
Judge Colleen McMahon denied Whitfield’s motion to reopen, directed the clerk to terminate the motion, and stated that the action was closed. The court instructed Whitfield not to file additional documents in the action except those directed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(a)(3), the court certified that an appeal would not be taken in good faith and denied permission to proceed without paying fees for an appeal.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.