James v. Keyser
- Laura Swain
- 1:20-cv-03468
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 3
In James v. Keyser, Judge Swain ordered pro se petitioner Sharkey James to submit an original signature for his fee-waiver application within two weeks.
Sharkey James, whose unsigned application to proceed without prepaying court fees had to be corrected before the case could be processed.
What happened
In James v. Keyser, Sharkey James filed the case without a lawyer and asked to proceed without paying court fees in advance. His application was not signed.
The court ordered James to return the application’s signature page with an original handwritten signature within two weeks. No response from the other side was required yet; the court said it would dismiss the case if James did not comply.
Judge Laura Taylor Swain also denied fee-waiver status for any appeal, certifying that an appeal would not be taken in good faith. The order did not decide the underlying claims.
The detailed version
- James v. Keyser · No. 1:20-cv-03468
- Laura Swain
- May 7, 2020
Background
Sharkey James brought the action without a lawyer and submitted an application to proceed without prepaying court fees. The application did not contain a signature.
Court’s Analysis
The court cited Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11(a) and Local Civil Rule 11.1(a), which require an unrepresented party to sign pleadings, motions, and other papers personally. The court also cited the Supreme Court’s explanation that the signature must be handwritten or otherwise physically placed on the document.
Order
The court directed James to resubmit the signature page of his fee-waiver application with an original signature within two weeks after the order. The Clerk of Court was directed to mail the order to James and record service on the docket. The court stated that no answer was required at that time and that, if James complied, the Clerk’s Office would process the case under its procedures. If he did not comply within the allowed time, the court stated that it would dismiss the action.
The court also certified under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(a)(3) that any appeal from the order would not be taken in good faith and denied fee-waiver status for purposes of an appeal. The order did not reach the merits of James’s underlying claims.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.