Pham v. Department of Corrections
- Colleen McMahon
- 1:20-cv-10131
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 3
In Pham v. Department of Corrections, Chief Judge McMahon ordered Lam Pham to pay filing fees or submit documents seeking fee-free filing.
Lam Pham must, within 30 days, either pay $400 or submit the required application and prisoner authorization; otherwise, the action will be dismissed.
What happened
Pham v. Department of Corrections concerns Lam Pham’s civil action, which he brought without a lawyer while incarcerated. The court had not received either the required filing fees or completed documents seeking permission to proceed without paying fees upfront.
Chief Judge McMahon gave Pham 30 days to pay $400 or submit a signed application and authorization allowing filing-fee payments to be taken from his prisoner account in installments. The case came from claims separated from an amended complaint in an earlier action involving 13 detainees.
Judge Colleen McMahon directed the Clerk to mail the order and said no summons would issue yet. If Pham does not comply, the action will be dismissed; the court also denied fee-free status for any appeal from this order.
The detailed version
- Pham v. Department of Corrections · No. 1:20-cv-10131
- Colleen McMahon
- Dec. 8, 2020
Background
Lam Pham, who was incarcerated at the Vernon C. Bain Center, brought this civil action without a lawyer. He had signed an amended complaint filed in an earlier case, but he had not paid the filing fees or submitted a completed application to proceed without prepaying fees and a prisoner authorization.
The earlier amended complaint included claims by 13 detainees who had not been included in the original complaint. A magistrate judge separated those claims into individual cases, and Pham’s claims became pending under this docket number.
Payment and fee-free filing requirements
The court explained that a prisoner must either pay $400 in fees—a $350 filing fee and a $50 administrative fee—or request permission to proceed without prepaying fees. To make that request, the prisoner must submit a signed application and a prisoner authorization. If the application is granted, the $350 filing fee is collected in installments from the prisoner’s account, and the authorization permits the facility to make those deductions and send the court certified account statements for the prior six months. The $50 administrative fee does not apply to a person granted this status.
Order
Judge Colleen McMahon ordered Pham, within 30 days of the order, to either pay the $400 or submit the required application and prisoner authorization labeled with docket number 20-CV-10131 (CM). The Clerk was directed to mail him the order and record service on the docket. No summons was to issue at that time.
The order stated that the case would be processed under the Clerk’s Office procedures if Pham complied. It also stated that the action would be dismissed if he failed to comply within the allowed period. The court certified that an appeal from the order would not be taken in good faith and denied permission to proceed without prepaying fees for purposes of an appeal.
Classification
This is a procedural order. It addresses filing fees and permission to proceed without prepaying them and does not decide the underlying claims.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.