Gunn v. Doe
- Louis Stanton
- 1:19-cv-10383
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Gunn v. Doe, Judge McMahon ordered Darrell Gunn to pay filing fees or submit a completed request to proceed without prepayment.
Darrell Gunn, an incarcerated plaintiff representing himself, must either pay the required fees or submit a completed fee-waiver application within 30 days to avoid dismissal of the action.
What happened
In Gunn v. Doe, Darrell Gunn, who was incarcerated and represented himself, filed a civil lawsuit against Jane Doe and others without completing the required request to avoid paying fees upfront.
Gunn submitted a form authorizing payment from his prison account but did not submit the completed fee-waiver application. The court gave him 30 days to either pay $400 or submit the completed application.
Judge McMahon ordered the Clerk to send Gunn the order and said no summons would issue yet. The court warned that failing to comply would result in dismissal and denied fee-waiver status for any appeal from this order.
The detailed version
- Gunn v. Doe · No. 1:19-cv-10383
- Louis Stanton
- Nov. 12, 2019
Background
Darrell Gunn, who was incarcerated at Sing Sing Correctional Facility and was proceeding without a lawyer, filed a civil action against Jane Doe and other defendants. He submitted the complaint with a prisoner authorization but did not submit a completed application to proceed without paying fees in advance.
Fee requirement
The court explained that filing a civil action required either payment of $400 in fees—a $350 filing fee and a $50 administrative fee—or a completed application to proceed without prepayment of fees. A prisoner seeking this fee-waiver status must also submit a signed prisoner authorization allowing the court to collect the $350 filing fee in installments from the prisoner's account and obtain certified account statements for the preceding six months. The $50 administrative fee does not apply to a person granted this status.
Order
The court ordered Gunn, within 30 days of the order, to either pay the $400 in fees or submit the attached completed application, labeled with docket number 19-CV-10383 (CM). The Clerk was directed to assign the matter to the judge's docket, mail Gunn a copy of the order, and record service on the docket. No summons would issue at that time. If Gunn complied, the case would be processed under the Clerk's procedures; if he did not comply within the allowed time, the action would be dismissed.
Judge McMahon also certified that an appeal from the order would not be taken in good faith and denied permission to proceed without prepaying fees for an appeal. The order additionally cautioned that certain dismissals of a prisoner's action can count as strikes under the Prison Litigation Reform Act, potentially limiting later fee-waiver filings.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.