Person v. The State of New York
- Laura Swain
- 1:21-cv-04171
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Person v. State of New York, Judge Swain ordered Wilford Person to pay fees or submit prisoner forms within 30 days, or face dismissal.
Wilford Person, an incarcerated plaintiff proceeding without a lawyer, must either pay the required fees or submit the required prisoner forms within 30 days to continue the action.
What happened
In Person v. State of New York, Wilford Person filed a lawsuit without paying the required fees or submitting the forms needed to ask to proceed without paying them upfront. The order says he is incarcerated and representing himself.
The court gave Person 30 days to either pay $402 in fees or submit a completed application and authorization allowing filing-fee payments to be deducted from his account. No summons will issue yet, and the case will be processed if he complies; otherwise, the action will be dismissed.
Judge Laura Taylor Swain also ruled that any appeal would not be taken in good faith and denied permission to appeal without prepaying fees. The order did not decide the merits of Person’s claims.
The detailed version
- Person v. The State of New York · No. 1:21-cv-04171
- Laura Swain
- May 12, 2021
Background
Wilford Person filed this civil action while incarcerated and proceeding without a lawyer. He submitted the complaint without paying the required fees and without submitting a completed application to proceed in forma pauperis (IFP), meaning without prepaying the filing fees, or a prisoner authorization.
The court explained that a prisoner must either pay $402—the $350 filing fee plus a $52 administrative fee—or submit the forms required to request IFP status. If IFP status is granted, the $350 filing fee must be collected in installments from the prisoner’s account. The prisoner authorization permits those deductions and requires certified copies of account statements for the preceding six months.
Order
The court ordered Person, within 30 days of the order, to either pay the $402 in fees or submit the attached IFP application and prisoner authorization. The forms were to be labeled with docket number 21-CV-4171 (LTS). The Clerk of Court was directed to mail the order to Person and record service on the docket.
No summons was to issue at that time. If Person complied, the case would be processed under the Clerk’s Office procedures. If he failed to comply within the permitted time, the action would be dismissed. The order also cautioned that a later dismissal for frivolousness or failure to state a claim could count as a strike under the prisoner filing-fee statute.
Disposition
Judge Laura Taylor Swain certified under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(a)(3) that an appeal from the order would not be taken in good faith and denied IFP status for purposes of an appeal. The opinion did not decide the merits of Person’s claims.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.