Thomas v. Town of Goshen Municipality
- Cathy Seibel
- 7:21-cv-02045
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
Thomas v. Bloise; Judge McMahon ordered the prisoner to pay filing fees or submit required forms before the case could proceed.
DeShawn Thomas, a prisoner representing himself, and the further processing of his civil action against Bloise and the Town of Goshen Municipality.
What happened
In Thomas v. Bloise, DeShawn Thomas filed a civil lawsuit without paying the required fees or submitting complete forms to proceed without prepayment. The court said Thomas had 30 days to act.
Thomas had to pay $402 or submit a signed application and authorization allowing installment payments from his prisoner account. The court also said no summons would issue yet and warned that failure to comply would result in dismissal.
Judge McMahon directed the Clerk to mail the order, denied fee-free status for any appeal, and certified that an appeal would not be taken in good faith.
The detailed version
- Thomas v. Town of Goshen Municipality · No. 7:21-cv-02045
- Cathy Seibel
- Mar. 12, 2021
Background
DeShawn Thomas, who was being held at the Orange County Correctional Facility, filed this civil action without paying the required fees and without submitting a completed application to proceed without prepaying fees or the required prisoner authorization. The opinion states that Thomas was representing himself.
The court’s instructions
The court ordered Thomas, within 30 days of the order, either to pay $402 in fees or submit the required application and prisoner authorization. The $402 consisted of a $350 filing fee and a $52 administrative fee. If the court approved payment without prepayment, the $350 filing fee would be collected in installments from Thomas’s prisoner account. The authorization also had to direct the facility to deduct those payments and provide certified account statements for the preceding six months.
The court directed the Clerk of Court to mail Thomas a copy of the order and record service on the docket. No summons was to issue at that time. The court stated that the case would be processed under the Clerk’s procedures if Thomas complied, but that the action would be dismissed if he did not comply within the allowed time.
Appeal and filing consequences
The court certified under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(a)(3) that any appeal from the order would not be taken in good faith and denied payment without prepayment of fees for an appeal. The order also warned that a later dismissal of a prisoner’s federal civil action as frivolous, malicious, or failing to state a claim can count as a strike under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(g). After three strikes, a prisoner generally cannot proceed without prepaying fees in new federal civil actions unless the prisoner faces imminent danger of serious physical injury.
Disposition
This was an administrative filing-fee and prisoner-authorization order, not a decision on the claims against the defendants. The court ordered Thomas to pay the fees or submit the required documents; it did not dismiss the action in this order. Judge McMahon also denied fee-free status for an appeal.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.