Clervrain v. Dayton
- Wilhelmina Wright
- 0:19-cv-00965
- U.S. District Court · District of Minnesota
- 2
In Clervrain v. Dayton, Judge Wright dismissed Clervrain’s complaint without prejudice for failure to prosecute after adopting the magistrate judge’s recommendation.
Plaintiff Manetirony Clervrain’s complaint was dismissed without prejudice; the order affected the case against Mark Dayton and the other named defendants.
What happened
In Clervrain v. Dayton, the magistrate judge recommended dismissing Manetirony Clervrain’s complaint because he had not paid the filing fee, which the recommendation treated as failure to prosecute.
Clervrain did not timely object to the recommendation. He later told the court that he had been transferred to another prison and asked for more time, but the court found that this did not address the missing filing fee.
Judge Wilhelmina M. Wright found no clear error, adopted the recommendation, and dismissed the complaint without prejudice. The court ordered that judgment be entered.
The detailed version
- Clervrain v. Dayton · No. 0:19-cv-00965
- Wilhelmina Wright
- Aug. 9, 2019
Background
Manetirony Clervrain sued Mark Dayton and other defendants. United States Magistrate Judge Hildy Bowbeer issued a May 8, 2019 Report and Recommendation recommending dismissal of Clervrain’s complaint without prejudice for failure to prosecute under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 41(b). The stated basis was the lack of a filing fee.
Review of the Recommendation
No timely objections were filed. Because there were no timely objections, the district court reviewed the recommendation for clear error, meaning it checked the record for an obvious mistake. Clervrain later sent a letter explaining that he had been transferred to a different prison facility and requesting extensions for orders he had not received. The court found that the letter did not prevent adoption of the recommendation because there was no indication that an order or the recommendation had been returned as undeliverable, and the letter did not address the missing filing fee.
Ruling
Judge Wilhelmina M. Wright found no clear error in the recommendation and adopted it. The court dismissed Clervrain’s complaint without prejudice and ordered that judgment be entered. The order did not decide the merits of Clervrain’s claims.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.