Manko v. Lenox Hill Hospital
- Laura Swain
- 1:20-cv-09928
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 3
In Manko v. Lenox Hill Hospital, Judge Swain vacated the dismissal, ordered return of appeal fees, and denied reconsideration motions as moot.
Nella Manko, whose dismissal and civil judgment were vacated and whose $505 in appeal fees were ordered returned; the case was reopened for further proceedings.
What happened
In Manko v. Lenox Hill Hospital, Nella Manko filed a new case without first obtaining required court permission to file without paying filing fees. The court initially dismissed the case after finding no filing-fee payment or fee-waiver application on the docket.
Manko later showed that she had paid the filing fees on December 11, 2020. Because her appeal was already pending, the district court asked the appeals court to allow it to correct the mistake. The appeals court dismissed the appeal and sent the case back for that purpose.
Judge Laura Taylor Swain vacated the earlier dismissal and civil judgment, ordered the return of Manko’s $505 in appeal fees, and noted that the case had been reopened. She denied Manko’s reconsideration motions as moot and denied fee-waiver status for any appeal from this order.
The detailed version
- Manko v. Lenox Hill Hospital · No. 1:20-cv-09928
- Laura Swain
- June 15, 2021
Background
Nella Manko filed this pro se action on November 24, 2020. A prior order had barred her from filing any new action without paying the filing fees unless she first obtained court permission to proceed without paying them. When Manko filed this case, she did not request that permission and did not include an application to proceed without paying the fees. Although she wrote “Fee Paid” on the envelope, the court initially found no indication that she had paid the required filing fees.
Earlier dismissal and appeal
On December 17, 2020, the court dismissed the complaint and entered a civil judgment. Manko appealed and stated that she had paid $402 in filing fees on December 11, 2020. She attached a receipt, and the docket was later updated to show that the Finance Department had processed her payment on that date.
Manko then asked the district court to restore the case. Because her appeal was pending, the district court could not immediately correct the earlier dismissal. The district court asked the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to allow it to do so. On June 3, 2021, the Second Circuit dismissed the appeal and sent the case back to the district court to vacate the judgment and review the complaint.
Ruling
Judge Laura Taylor Swain directed the Clerk of Court to vacate the December 17, 2020 order of dismissal and civil judgment. The court also directed the Clerk to return the $505 in filing fees that Manko had paid for the appeal. The action had already been reopened for further proceedings.
The court denied Manko’s motions for reconsideration as moot, meaning that it found no need to decide them after vacating the earlier dismissal. The court also certified that an appeal from this order would not be taken in good faith and denied permission to proceed without paying fees for such an appeal. This order did not decide the merits of Manko’s complaint.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.