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S.D.N.Y.Procedural orderFiled Feb. 5, 2021

Martinez v. Commissioner of Social Security

Judge
Vincent Briccetti
Docket
7:20-cv-10142
Court
U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
Pages
1
Social SecurityCivil Procedure
In one sentence

In Martinez v. Commissioner, Judge Briccetti dismissed the case without prejudice after Martinez neither completed his fee-waiver application nor paid the filing fee.

Who this affects

Antonio Martinez's Social Security case was dismissed without prejudice after he did not complete the fee-waiver application or pay the $400 filing fee; the order also denied permission to appeal without paying the appeal fee.

What happened

In Martinez v. Commissioner of Social Security, Antonio Martinez submitted only one page of a two-page application to proceed without paying the filing fee. The court could not decide whether to approve his request.

The court ordered Martinez to submit a completed application or pay the $400 filing fee by January 2021, and warned that failing to do so would result in dismissal. Martinez did neither.

Judge Vincent L. Briccetti dismissed the case without prejudice, directed the clerk to close it, and denied Martinez permission to appeal without paying the appeal fee because the court certified that an appeal would not be taken in good faith.

The detailed version

For law students, journalists, and other readers who want the full reasoning

Case
Martinez v. Commissioner of Social Security · No. 7:20-cv-10142
Judge
Vincent Briccetti
Date
Feb. 5, 2021

Background

Antonio Martinez filed this Social Security case but submitted only one page of a two-page application to proceed without paying the filing fee. Because the application was incomplete, the court could not determine whether Martinez qualified for that status.

In a December 4, 2020 order, the court instructed Martinez to submit a fully completed application or pay the $400 filing fee by January 2021. The court warned that the case would be dismissed if he did not comply. The opinion states that Martinez had not submitted a completed application or paid the fee as of February 5, 2021.

Ruling

The court dismissed the case without prejudice. It directed the clerk to terminate the action and ordered that a copy of the order be mailed to Martinez at the address on the docket.

The court also certified under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(a)(3) that any appeal would not be taken in good faith. As a result, it denied permission to proceed without paying the fee for an appeal. The order did not address the underlying Social Security dispute.

Classification

This is a procedural order because the case was dismissed for failure to complete the fee-waiver application or pay the filing fee, without reaching the underlying claim.

The authoritative version

Read the full 1-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.

Open opinion PDF →
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