Jones v. New York City
- Colleen McMahon
- 1:19-cv-09979
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 3
In Jones v. New York City, Judge McMahon dismissed Loretta Jones’s action as frivolous and denied fee-free appeal status.
Loretta Jones’s action was dismissed during the court’s required screening of a complaint filed without prepaying fees. The dismissal ended the action, denied leave to amend, and denied fee-free status for an appeal.
What happened
Jones v. New York City was brought by Loretta Jones, who was representing herself without a lawyer and sought an order requiring relief from alleged harassment and surveillance by the defendants.
Jones alleged that the New York City Police Department, New York City, New York State, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the United States, and Vanessa Light had violated her constitutional rights. The court found the allegations irrational and unsupported by any legal theory.
Judge Colleen McMahon dismissed the action as frivolous, declined to let Jones amend her complaint, and denied her fee-free status for an appeal after certifying that an appeal would not be taken in good faith.
The detailed version
- Jones v. New York City · No. 1:19-cv-09979
- Colleen McMahon
- Dec. 20, 2019
Background
Loretta Jones filed the action without a lawyer and sought injunctive relief. The court had previously allowed her to proceed without paying filing fees. The court treated her later-filed addendum as a supplement to her complaint.
Jones named the New York City Police Department, the City of New York, the State of New York, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the United States, and Vanessa Light as defendants. She alleged that events beginning in 1992 and continuing to the present occurred at her residence, workplace, and other places. She claimed that a former New York City police officer and others had stalked, raped, and abused her; that investigations by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the New York City Police Department escalated; and that groups identifying themselves as police, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the military used surveillance, invasive technologies, speaker technologies, and sleep-deprivation tactics against her.
Screening standard
Because Jones was proceeding without paying filing fees, the court was required to dismiss the complaint if it was frivolous, malicious, failed to state a claim for relief, sought money from an immune defendant, or presented no subject-matter jurisdiction. The court also stated that it had to read a self-represented complaint liberally and consider the strongest claims reasonably suggested by it.
A claim is frivolous when it lacks an arguable basis in law or fact. The court explained that allegations may be factually frivolous when they are irrational or wholly incredible, or legally frivolous when they rely on an indisputably meritless legal theory.
Ruling
The court concluded that, even when read with the special consideration given to complaints filed without a lawyer, Jones’s claims were irrational and had no legal theory supporting them. It therefore dismissed the action as frivolous under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(e)(2)(B)(i).
The court declined to grant leave to amend because it determined that the defects could not be corrected by amendment. Judge Colleen McMahon also certified under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(a)(3) that any appeal would not be taken in good faith and denied Jones permission to proceed without paying fees for an appeal.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.