Mendoza v. Mladinich
- Louis Stanton
- 1:20-cv-10010
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Mendoza v. Mladinich, Judge McMahon ordered the incarcerated plaintiff to pay filing fees or submit authorization for installment payments.
Rudy Mendoza, the incarcerated plaintiff, was required to pay the fees or submit the prisoner authorization within 30 days; the action could be dismissed if he did not comply.
What happened
Mendoza v. Mladinich concerns Rudy Mendoza’s civil action, filed without a lawyer, while he was incarcerated. He submitted an application to proceed without paying fees upfront but did not submit the required prisoner authorization.
The court gave Mendoza 30 days to either pay $400 in fees or submit the authorization. The authorization would allow $350 in filing fees to be deducted from his prison account in installments and would provide six months of account statements. No summons would issue yet, and failure to comply would result in dismissal of the action.
Judge Colleen McMahon directed the Clerk to mail the order to Mendoza and certified that an appeal would not be taken in good faith, denying permission to appeal without prepaying fees. The court did not decide the underlying claims.
The detailed version
- Mendoza v. Mladinich · No. 1:20-cv-10010
- Louis Stanton
- Dec. 1, 2020
Background
Rudy Mendoza brought this civil action without a lawyer while incarcerated at the federal Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York. He submitted an application to proceed without prepaying court fees, commonly called an application to proceed in forma pauperis, but he did not submit the required prisoner authorization.
Required Filing or Payment
The court explained that filing a civil action ordinarily requires $400: a $350 filing fee and a $50 administrative fee. If the court grants a prisoner’s application to proceed without prepayment, the $350 filing fee must be collected in installments from the prisoner’s prison trust-fund account. The prisoner authorization permits those deductions and requires the facility to send certified copies of the prisoner’s account statements for the preceding six months. The $50 administrative fee does not apply to a person granted permission to proceed without prepayment under 28 U.S.C. § 1915.
Within 30 days of the order, Mendoza had to either pay the $400 in fees or complete and submit the attached prisoner authorization, labeled with docket number 1:20-CV-10010 (CM). The order stated that if he failed to comply within the allowed time, the action would be dismissed. If he complied, the Clerk’s Office would process the action under its ordinary procedures. The court also directed the Clerk to mail Mendoza a copy of the order and record service on the docket. No summons would issue at that time.
Ruling and Effect
Judge Colleen McMahon issued an order directing Mendoza to complete one of those two steps. The order did not decide the merits of Mendoza’s claims against Robert Mladinich. The court certified under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(a)(3) that an appeal from the order would not be taken in good faith and denied permission to appeal without prepaying fees. The order also cautioned that certain qualifying dismissals can count as “strikes” under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(g), potentially restricting a prisoner’s ability to proceed without prepaying fees after three strikes, unless the prisoner faces imminent danger of serious physical injury.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.