Todie-Reyes v. Orellana
- Laura Swain
- 1:21-cv-10444
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 3
In Todie-Reyes v. Orellana, Judge Swain ordered payment or a corrected fee-waiver application because the plaintiff’s financial information was incomplete.
Eugene A. Todie-Reyes must either pay the required fees or submit a complete amended fee-waiver application within thirty days. The case will not proceed to summons issuance unless he complies, and the action will be dismissed if he does not.
What happened
In Todie-Reyes v. Orellana, Eugene A. Todie-Reyes filed the case without paying the required fees or submitting a complete application to proceed without prepaying them. He later submitted an application, but left important financial questions unanswered, including how he supported himself and paid his expenses.
The court could not decide whether Todie-Reyes qualified to proceed without prepaying fees. It ordered him, within thirty days, either to pay $402 or submit an amended application with complete information about his current finances. No summons would issue yet, and the court said the action would be dismissed if he did not comply.
Judge Laura Taylor Swain also denied fee-waiver status for any appeal from this order, certifying that an appeal would not be taken in good faith. The order did not decide the underlying claims against Cinthia Carolina Reyes Orellana.
The detailed version
- Todie-Reyes v. Orellana · No. 1:21-cv-10444
- Laura Swain
- Jan. 11, 2022
Background
Eugene A. Todie-Reyes filed this civil action pro se, meaning without a lawyer. He did not pay the required filing fees or initially submit an application to proceed without prepaying fees. The court had previously directed him to pay $402 or submit a completed and signed application.
Todie-Reyes submitted an application, but the court found that it did not provide enough information about his finances. He stated that he was not currently employed and last worked in March 2020, but did not provide his gross monthly wages at that time. He also stated that he had no income from the listed sources, that his expenses were accumulating, and that he had negative $3,000 in the bank. The court found it unclear how he paid expenses such as his phone and MetroCard costs.
Order
The court stated that it could not decide the application because Todie-Reyes had not sufficiently explained his income or how he paid his expenses. Within thirty days, he must either pay the $402 in filing and administrative fees or submit an amended application. The amended application must address the identified deficiencies and provide facts showing that he cannot pay the fees.
If the court grants the amended application, Todie-Reyes may proceed without prepaying fees. No summons would issue at that time. If he failed to comply within the allowed period, the action would be dismissed. The clerk was directed to mail him a copy of the order and record service on the docket.
Appeal and Effect
The court certified under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(a)(3) that an appeal from the order would not be taken in good faith and denied fee-waiver status for purposes of an appeal. The order addressed only the filing-fee issue; it did not reach the merits of Todie-Reyes’s claims against Cinthia Carolina Reyes Orellana.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.