Johnson v. Victoria Fire and Casualty Company
- Colleen McMahon
- 1:19-cv-02782
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 4
In Johnson v. Victoria Fire and Casualty Company, Judge McMahon transferred the case to Ohio because venue appeared improper and related claims had been litigated there.
Robert W. Johnson, who must pursue any further proceedings in the Southern District of Ohio; the transferee court will decide whether he may proceed without prepaying fees.
What happened
In Johnson v. Victoria Fire and Casualty Company, Robert W. Johnson sued Victoria Fire and Casualty Company, Nationwide Insurance, and Cambridge Insurance Group LLC after a car accident. He represented himself and asked to proceed without paying court fees.
Johnson said he lived in the Bronx, that two defendants were headquartered outside New York, and that the accident occurred in Buffalo. The opinion states that he had filed many related cases, including cases in the Southern District of Ohio, where a court had deemed him a vexatious litigant and restricted future filings.
Judge Colleen McMahon transferred this case to the Southern District of Ohio because venue appeared improper and allowing the case to proceed in New York could help Johnson avoid the Ohio court’s filing restrictions. The New York court closed the case, did not issue a summons, left the fee question to the Ohio court, and denied fee-free appeal status.
The detailed version
- Johnson v. Victoria Fire and Casualty Company · No. 1:19-cv-02782
- Colleen McMahon
- Nov. 1, 2019
Background
Robert W. Johnson, proceeding without a lawyer and seeking to proceed without prepaying filing fees, brought this diversity-jurisdiction action against Victoria Fire and Casualty Company, Nationwide Insurance, and Cambridge Insurance Group LLC. He alleged that Victoria Fire and Casualty Company was headquartered in Alabama and Nationwide Insurance was headquartered in Ohio. His claims arose from a January 28, 2017 car accident in Buffalo, New York. The opinion states that Johnson resided in the Bronx and had filed many other cases arising from the accident.
Related Ohio Proceedings
The court discussed an earlier related proceeding in the Southern District of Ohio. In that proceeding, a magistrate judge summarized Johnson’s litigation history and concluded that his claims were barred by claim preclusion, or the rule generally preventing a party from relitigating claims already resolved. The magistrate judge also concluded that, even if claim preclusion did not apply, Johnson had failed to state a claim. The Ohio district judge adopted that recommendation, overruled Johnson’s objections, and deemed him a vexatious litigant. The Ohio court also recommended restrictions on future filings, including requiring either an attorney’s certification that a proposed claim had a good-faith basis or advance review of a proposed complaint.
Venue and Transfer
Judge Colleen McMahon stated that venue did not appear to be proper in the Southern District of New York. The court also determined that no purpose would be served by allowing Johnson to litigate the same claims in New York after litigating them in the Southern District of Ohio, because doing so could allow him to evade the Ohio court’s filing restrictions. The court therefore transferred the action to the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio.
Disposition
The clerk was directed to transfer the action to the Southern District of Ohio. The transferee court was left to decide whether Johnson could proceed without prepaying fees. The New York court directed that no summons issue and stated that the order closed the case. It also certified that any appeal would not be taken in good faith and denied Johnson permission to appeal without prepaying fees.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.