Bonilla v. Mendocino County Superior Court
- Phyllis Hamilton
- 4:23-cv-05394
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 3
In Bonilla v. Chhabria, Judge Hamilton dismissed the related civil-rights cases with prejudice after finding no imminent-danger exception and other legal bars.
Steven Wayne Bonilla’s multiple self-represented civil-rights cases against various federal judges and federal and state courts were dismissed with prejudice; the clerk was directed to close the cases and return future submissions without filing them.
What happened
Steven Wayne Bonilla, a state prisoner representing himself, filed multiple nearly identical civil-rights cases against federal judges and federal and state courts. He sought relief related to his conviction and the handling of his other cases.
The court said Bonilla had previously been barred from proceeding without paying the filing fee unless he showed that he faced an immediate danger of serious physical injury when he filed. The court found that his complaints did not make that showing. It also said the lawsuits would be barred by several other legal rules even if he could proceed without paying the fee.
The court dismissed the cases with prejudice, terminated all pending motions, and closed the cases. Judge Phyllis J. Hamilton also said the repetitive and frivolous filings did not provide a reasonable basis to question her impartiality.
The detailed version
- Bonilla v. Mendocino County Superior Court · No. 4:23-cv-05394
- Phyllis Hamilton
- Oct. 30, 2023
Background
Steven Wayne Bonilla, identified as a state prisoner and a condemned prisoner, filed multiple civil-rights complaints under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 while representing himself. The order lists 24 related case numbers. Bonilla named various federal judges and federal and state courts as defendants. The court described the complaints as presenting nearly identical claims concerning his underlying conviction and the handling of his other cases in state and federal courts.
The court also noted that Bonilla had a pending federal petition challenging his custody in the same district, with appointed counsel.
Filing-fee restriction
Bonilla had previously been disqualified from proceeding without paying the filing fee under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(g). That statute generally prevents a prisoner with qualifying prior dismissals from proceeding without the fee unless the prisoner shows that he was in imminent danger of serious physical injury when the complaint was filed.
The court found that the allegations did not show imminent danger at the time of filing. It therefore held that Bonilla could not proceed without paying the filing fee.
Other legal bars and disposition
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 discussed in Heck v. Humphrey, Younger v. Harris, Demos v. U.S. District Court, or Mullis v. U.S. Bankruptcy Court. The order did not provide a separate claim-by-claim analysis of those rules.
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.
Recusal issue
The order stated that the cases were not ones in which Judge Hamilton’s impartiality could reasonably be questioned because of the repetitive and frivolous nature of the filings. Citing Ninth Circuit authority, the court said that, absent legitimate reasons for recusal, a judge has a duty to decide cases assigned to that judge.
Classification
This is a procedural order. The court dismissed the cases based on the filing-fee restriction and other threshold legal bars rather than deciding whether Bonilla’s underlying civil-rights claims were legally valid.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.