Brooks v. Taborn
- Laura Swain
- 1:21-cv-04472
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Brooks v. Taborn, Judge Swain gave Brooks 30 more days to pay fees or request permission to proceed without them.
Emanuel Manny Brooks, Jr.; the order required him to pay the fees or submit the specified paperwork within 30 additional days and warned that the action would be dismissed if he did not comply.
What happened
In Brooks v. Taborn, Emanuel Manny Brooks, Jr., who filed the case without a lawyer, had not paid the required filing and administrative fees or submitted paperwork requesting permission to proceed without paying them. The court had previously ordered him to do one of those things within 30 days.
Because that deadline had passed, the court gave Brooks an additional 30 days to pay the fees or submit the required paperwork. The court did not issue a summons and said the case would be dismissed if Brooks did not comply within the additional period.
Judge Laura Taylor Swain also denied permission to appeal without paying fees, finding that an appeal would not be taken in good faith. This order did not itself dismiss the case.
The detailed version
- Brooks v. Taborn · No. 1:21-cv-04472
- Laura Swain
- June 25, 2021
Background
Emanuel Manny Brooks, Jr. filed this action without a lawyer while detained in the Westchester County Jail. He submitted the complaint without paying the required $402 in filing and administrative fees and without submitting an application to proceed without paying the fees or the required prisoner authorization.
On May 20, 2021, the court ordered Brooks to pay the fees or submit the application and prisoner authorization within 30 days. Brooks did not comply. The court later received a letter from him that was unclear but appeared to request an injunction, meaning an order requiring or prohibiting some action. The court said it could not act on either the complaint or the letter until Brooks satisfied the fee or application requirement.
Order
Because the original deadline had expired, the court granted Brooks an additional 30 days to comply with the May 20 order. He had to either pay the filing fees or submit both an application to proceed without paying them and a prisoner authorization. The court directed that those documents be labeled with this case's docket number.
The Clerk of Court was directed to mail Brooks a copy of the order and record service on the docket. No summons was to issue at that time. The court stated that, if Brooks complied, the case would be processed under the Clerk's procedures; if he failed to comply within the allowed time, the action would be dismissed. The order therefore did not dismiss the action at that point.
Appeal and prisoner-filing warning
Under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(a)(3), Judge Laura Taylor Swain certified that an appeal from this order would not be taken in good faith and denied permission to appeal without paying the required fees. The court also warned that a prisoner's action dismissed as frivolous, malicious, or for failing to state a claim can count as a “strike” under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(g), and that three such strikes generally prevent a prisoner from proceeding without paying fees unless the prisoner faces imminent danger of serious physical injury.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.