Onatolu v. United States District Court
- Colleen McMahon
- 1:20-cv-10995
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 1
In Onatolu v. United States District Court, Judge McMahon dismissed the action without prejudice and denied fee-free appeal status.
Adekunle A. Onatolu, whose action was dismissed without prejudice and whose request to proceed without paying fees on appeal was denied.
What happened
Adekunle A. Onatolu filed this case without a lawyer and asked to proceed without paying court fees. A 2015 order required him to obtain permission before filing any new action without paying those fees, but he had not obtained that permission.
Onatolu also filed requests for more time to appeal and to proceed without paying appeal fees. The court did not allow those requests to proceed because he had not first sought permission under the 2015 order.
Judge Colleen McMahon dismissed Onatolu’s action without prejudice for violating the earlier order. She also ruled that an appeal would not be taken in good faith and denied fee-free status for an appeal.
The detailed version
- Onatolu v. United States District Court · No. 1:20-cv-10995
- Colleen McMahon
- Dec. 29, 2020
Background
On July 9, 2015, the court ordered that Adekunle A. Onatolu could not file any new action without paying court fees unless he first obtained the court’s permission. In this case, Onatolu filed a new action without a lawyer and asked to proceed without paying court fees, but he did not seek the required permission.
Onatolu also submitted a request for more time to file a notice of appeal and a request to proceed without paying fees on appeal. The opinion states that he had not sought permission from the court for those filings.
Ruling
The court dismissed this action without prejudice under 28 U.S.C. § 1651 because Onatolu failed to comply with the July 9, 2015 order. “Without prejudice” means the dismissal itself does not bar a later filing, although the earlier permission requirement remains stated in the order. The court also terminated all other matters.
The court certified under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(a)(3) that an appeal from the order would not be taken in good faith. It therefore denied Onatolu permission to proceed without paying fees for an appeal. The order did not decide the underlying legal claims in the action.
Read the full 1-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.