Lonergan v. Ludeman
- John Tunheim
- 0:16-cv-02066
- U.S. District Court · District of Minnesota
- 6
In Lonergan v. Ludeman, Judge Tunheim denied the plaintiffs’ fee-waiver requests because their appeal was frivolous.
The nine named plaintiffs—Peter Allan, Sr., Terry Lee Branson, Bradley Wayne Foster, Kenneth Donald Hand, Randy Earl Hammermeister, Steven Merrill Hogy, Kevin Scott Karsjens, Peter Gerard Lonergan, and Brad Ronald Stevens—were denied permission to appeal without paying the filing fee.
What happened
Lonergan v. Ludeman involved nine Minnesota Sex Offender Program patients who challenged the program’s conditions and policies. After the court dismissed their claims, the plaintiffs appealed together.
Each plaintiff asked to appeal without paying the filing fee. The court explained that this waiver is unavailable when an appeal is not brought in good faith, including when it has no reasonable legal or factual basis.
The court found that the plaintiffs identified no specific factual or legal error and only stated that the court had erred in applying issue preclusion. Judge John R. Tunheim denied all of their applications to appeal without paying the filing fee.
The detailed version
- Lonergan v. Ludeman · No. 0:16-cv-02066
- John Tunheim
- Feb. 13, 2023
Background
Peter Allan, Sr., Terry Lee Branson, Bradley Wayne Foster, Kenneth Donald Hand, Randy Earl Hammermeister, Steven Merrill Hogy, Kevin Scott Karsjens, Peter Gerard Lonergan, and Brad Ronald Stevens are patients in the Minnesota Sex Offender Program (MSOP). They claimed that MSOP conditions and policies violated their constitutional rights.
The district court had dismissed their cases after concluding that issue preclusion—meaning that an issue already decided in an earlier case could not be relitigated—barred their claims. The plaintiffs appealed, and the Eighth Circuit reversed that dismissal and remanded the matters with instructions to stay them while a related case proceeded. After that related case reached the same result on remand, the district court again concluded that collateral estoppel, another term for issue preclusion, barred the plaintiffs’ complaints. The plaintiffs appealed again.
Applications to Appeal Without Paying the Filing Fee
Each plaintiff had previously been allowed to appeal without paying the filing fee and again applied for that status under 28 U.S.C. § 1915. The court explained that a person must show an inability to pay, but must also show that the appeal is taken in good faith. An appeal is not taken in good faith when it is frivolous, meaning that it lacks an arguable basis in law or fact.
The court found the appeal frivolous. The plaintiffs presented no arguments for the Eighth Circuit to consider, identified no factual finding they believed was wrong, and gave no basis for claiming legal error. Their joint notice of appeal only stated: “The court erred in it’s [sic] analysis, in finding issue preclusion.”
Disposition
The court exercised its discretion to deem the appeal frivolous and denied the plaintiffs’ applications to proceed without paying the filing fee on appeal. The order denied all of the listed petitions. This opinion addressed the fee-waiver applications; it did not decide the merits of the plaintiffs’ underlying constitutional claims. Judge John R. Tunheim signed the order on February 13, 2023.
Read the full 6-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.