Petroceli v. Varengold Bank
- Colleen McMahon
- 1:21-cv-01195
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Petroceli v. Varengold Bank, Judge McMahon administratively closed an accidentally opened case because the filings belonged in three other cases.
Domingo Lugao Petroceli and the parties or entities named in the petitions; the three other related actions were not closed by this order.
What happened
Domingo Lugao Petroceli submitted several petitions for compensatory damages, including one against Varengold Bank, through the court’s email-filing system for people without lawyers. The Clerk opened four separate civil actions, but this case included copies of all three petitions and had been opened by mistake.
The court said this case should not be litigated because the three petitions were already pending in other actions. It directed the Clerk to administratively close this case without prejudice to Petroceli’s pending cases under docket numbers 21-CV-1205, 21-CV-1210, and 21-CV-1212.
Judge Colleen McMahon also directed the Clerk to mail the order to Petroceli, terminate the other pending matters in this action, and deny him permission to proceed without paying filing fees on an appeal because the court certified that an appeal would not be taken in good faith.
The detailed version
- Petroceli v. Varengold Bank · No. 1:21-cv-01195
- Colleen McMahon
- Mar. 8, 2021
Background
On February 8, 2021, Domingo Lugao Petroceli submitted several emails through the court’s temporary system for email filing by people without lawyers. The emails contained multiple PDF attachments, including a petition for compensatory damages against Varengold Bank, a petition against IronFX, and a petition against the FBI Buffalo Division Field Office and other identified entities or groups.
The Clerk opened the submission as four civil actions: this case, No. 21-CV-1195; Petroceli v. FBI Buffalo Division, No. 21-CV-1205; Petroceli v. IronFX, No. 21-CV-1210; and Petroceli v. Varengold, No. 21-CV-1212. The opinion states that this case was opened in error. It also explains that the petitions against Varengold Bank and IronFX were combined and docketed as one filing, while the petition against the FBI defendants was docketed separately.
Ruling
The court concluded that no useful purpose would be served by litigating No. 21-CV-1195 because the three petitions had already been opened as separate actions and were pending under the other docket numbers. It directed the Clerk to administratively close this action, without prejudice to Petroceli’s pending cases under Nos. 21-CV-1205, 21-CV-1210, and 21-CV-1212. The order also directed the Clerk to terminate all other pending matters in this action and mail a copy of the order to Petroceli.
The court certified under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(a)(3) that any appeal from the order would not be taken in good faith. It therefore denied permission to appeal without paying filing fees. The order did not decide the merits of the petitions.
Classification basis
This is a procedural order because the court administratively closed a case that it determined had been opened in error, without deciding the underlying claims.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.