Brown v. Evans

Background

William O. Brown, who is incarcerated at Deuel Vocational Institution, filed this civil-rights action without a lawyer under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against M.S. Evans, identified as a warden, and Monterey Superior Court. Brown had also described his claims as potentially involving a petition challenging custody, but the court treated the filing as a civil-rights case because Brown stated that he was not challenging his conviction or sentence.

Brown alleges that California courts designated him a vexatious litigant in 2007 and issued a prefiling order requiring him to obtain court permission before starting new state-court litigation. He says his later requests to vacate that order and remove his name from the state list were denied. According to the complaint, those denials violated his First Amendment right to petition the government and seek redress of grievances.

Earlier Related Proceedings

The opinion describes earlier related proceedings in which Brown challenged the same vexatious-litigant restrictions. One earlier petition was dismissed because the requested relief would not have hastened his release from custody, so the federal court lacked habeas jurisdiction. In another proceeding, the court denied leave to proceed without paying the filing fee and dismissed the case after Brown did not respond to an order to show cause.

The court also identified four earlier civil-rights cases dismissed for failure to state a claim: E.D. Cal. No. C 03-02365-GEB-GGH; N.D. Cal. No. 05-cv-2067-CW (PR); N.D. Cal. No. C 05-2776 CW (PR); and N.D. Cal. No. 14-cv-4696 PJH (PR).

Legal Standard

The Prison Litigation Reform Act generally prevents a prisoner from proceeding in forma pauperis—meaning without paying the filing fee—if the prisoner has had three or more prior federal actions or appeals dismissed as frivolous, malicious, or for failure to state a claim. The exception is when the prisoner is under imminent danger of serious physical injury.

The court explained that a prior dismissal counts as a “strike” only when the entire case was dismissed for one of those reasons. A dismissal based only on an earlier three-strikes finding does not create an additional strike unless the case was also found to be frivolous, malicious, or legally insufficient.

Court’s Action

The court found that Brown had at least three prior dismissals that count as strikes. It also found that the complaint did not appear to show that Brown was under imminent danger of serious physical injury when he filed the action.

The court ordered Brown to show cause in writing within 28 days why his request to proceed without paying the filing fee should not be denied under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(g), or to pay the full $400 filing fee. The order states that failure to respond as directed will result in dismissal without further notice. This order itself did not deny the fee request or dismiss the action.