Jackson v. Find Jodi. Com Inc

Background

Tony Dejuan Jackson, a Minnesota state court prisoner serving a life sentence for criminal sexual conduct, filed this action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against FindJodi.com Inc., a nonprofit organization, state officials, and state entities. His initial complaint primarily alleged that a private website made false statements about the disappearance of a missing person and also alleged a conspiracy to unlawfully convict and sentence him.

Jackson applied to proceed without paying the filing fee, a status commonly called proceeding in forma pauperis. The magistrate judge found that he was not eligible because he had at least three prior qualifying dismissals, known as “strikes,” under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(g). That statute generally prevents a prisoner with three or more such strikes from proceeding without paying the fee unless he is under imminent danger of serious physical injury. The magistrate judge also found that Jackson’s conviction-related claims were improperly joined with his website-related claims and were barred by the rule from Heck v. Humphrey. Jackson was ordered to pay the $400 filing fee by April 28, 2020, but he did not do so.

Claims and filings at issue

Jackson objected to the recommendation, arguing that the COVID-19 pandemic placed him in imminent danger and made him eligible to proceed without paying the fee. In the same filing, he sought to amend his complaint and requested an emergency injunction and a temporary restraining order. He also filed motions concerning relation-back amendments and newly produced evidence. While the objection was pending, he filed a first amended complaint adding allegations about unsafe conditions at MCF-Stillwater, COVID-19 conditions, and restrictions affecting legal research and visits with outside guests.

The court treated the first amended complaint as the operative pleading but construed Jackson’s combined filing as an objection rather than as another amended pleading. It held that the amended complaint did not make the recommendation moot. The court considered the conviction-related and COVID-19-related claims improperly joined with the website-related claims because they did not arise from the same events or involve a common question of law or fact. Those improperly joined claims were dismissed without prejudice. The court also agreed that the conviction-related claims were foreclosed by Heck.

Court’s reasoning

The court concluded that the website-related allegations did not place Jackson in imminent danger of serious physical harm. It also agreed that imprisonment alone was insufficient to invoke the statutory exception. Because Jackson was ineligible to proceed without paying the filing fee and had not paid the required fee by the deadline, the court adopted the magistrate judge’s recommendation to dismiss the action for failure to prosecute under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 41(b).

Disposition

Judge Susan Richard Nelson adopted the July 7, 2020 Report and Recommendation and overruled Jackson’s objection. The court denied as moot Jackson’s motions for an emergency injunction, a temporary restraining order, appointment of counsel, an order concerning exhibits, an order adopting relation-back amendments, and acceptance of newly produced direct evidence. The action was dismissed without prejudice.

Classification basis

This is a procedural order because the court disposed of the action based on filing-fee eligibility and failure to prosecute, along with claim-joinder and other threshold issues, rather than deciding whether Jackson’s underlying website, conviction, or prison-condition allegations were legally valid.