Loving v. Superintendent
- Kenneth Karas
- 7:20-cv-11135
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Loving v. Superintendent, Judge McMahon closed a duplicate civil-rights case and moved its filings into Loving’s earlier case.
Franklin Loving; the Clerk of Court; and the Superintendent having custody of Loving, who was directed not to take funds from Loving’s trust account for this action.
What happened
In Loving v. Superintendent, Franklin Loving filed a civil-rights complaint about a medical examination during his January 2019 intake at Downstate Correctional Facility. The court had already opened an earlier case involving the same claims.
The court determined that this case had been opened by mistake after Loving submitted documents responding to an order in the earlier case. It directed the Clerk of Court to move the filing-fee waiver application and prisoner authorization into the earlier case and treat this complaint as an amended complaint there.
Judge Colleen McMahon directed the Clerk to administratively close this case. The court also ordered that Loving not be charged the filing fee for this case and that prison officials not take money from his trust account for it. The court denied fee-waiver status for any appeal, finding that an appeal would not be taken in good faith.
The detailed version
- Loving v. Superintendent · No. 7:20-cv-11135
- Kenneth Karas
- Jan. 28, 2021
Background
Franklin Loving asserted claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 concerning his medical examination during the intake process at Downstate Correctional Facility in January 2019. The court had received an earlier complaint raising those claims and opened it as case number 20-CV-11135. In that earlier case, the court directed Loving to pay the filing fee or submit an application to proceed without paying the fee and a prisoner authorization form, marked with that case number.
Loving then submitted the fee-waiver application, prisoner authorization, and another complaint. Those documents were opened as this separate action, 21-CV-0527. The court found that the documents appeared to have been submitted in response to the order in the earlier case and that the new complaint raised the same claims.
Court’s action
The court directed the Clerk of Court to refile the fee-waiver application and prisoner authorization from this case in case 20-CV-11135, file the complaint from this case as an amended complaint in that earlier action, and administratively close this case. The court also directed that future documents related to the matter be filed under the earlier docket number.
Because the court concluded that this action had been opened in error, it directed that Loving not be charged the $350 filing fee for this action and that the Superintendent having custody of Loving not encumber funds from his trust account for this lawsuit.
Appeal-related ruling
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 proceed without paying fees for purposes of an appeal. The order addressed the handling of duplicate filings and did not decide the underlying § 1983 claims.
Disposition
This action was administratively closed, and its filings were transferred into case 20-CV-11135 as specified in the order.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.