Lurch, Jr. v. Bernal
- Colleen McMahon
- 1:20-cv-09329
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 4
Judge McMahon denied Lurch, Jr. v. Bernal’s motion to reopen the case under Rule 60(b).
The ruling directly affected Robert Derek Lurch Jr.’s attempt to reopen and transfer his dismissed action. The false-arrest and excessive-force claims were not reopened in this case; the order said he may pursue them by filing a new action in the District of New Jersey.
What happened
In Lurch, Jr. v. Bernal, Robert Derek Lurch Jr. asked the court to reopen his false-arrest and excessive-force case, arguing that the three-strikes filing bar was wrongly applied because he was not incarcerated when he filed it.
The court reviewed the original filing, which arrived by mail with a Rikers Island return address, and concluded that Lurch appeared to have been incarcerated. It found that he had not shown a valid reason for relief from the earlier dismissal under any part of Rule 60(b), the federal rule governing relief from a judgment or order.
Judge Colleen McMahon denied the motion for reconsideration and left the case closed. The order stated that Lurch may file a new action in the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey to pursue his false-arrest and excessive-force claims.
The detailed version
- Lurch, Jr. v. Bernal · No. 1:20-cv-09329
- Colleen McMahon
- Jan. 19, 2022
Background
Robert Derek Lurch Jr. filed this action without a lawyer, alleging that he was falsely arrested in Newark, New Jersey, on September 26, 2020, and that Police Officer Dariel Bernal used excessive force during the arrest. The court had previously determined that Lurch had accumulated three dismissals qualifying as strikes under the Prison Litigation Reform Act. Under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(g), that determination barred him from proceeding without paying the filing fee unless he showed that the three-strikes finding was incorrect.
The court gave Lurch 30 days to submit a declaration addressing the strikes. He did not respond. On December 21, 2020, the court denied his request to proceed without paying the filing fee and dismissed the complaint without prejudice under the three-strikes rule. The court also noted that Newark, New Jersey, is outside the Southern District of New York, so venue would not be proper there even if the three-strikes bar did not apply.
Motion to Reopen
About 11 months later, Lurch moved to reinstate the case, arguing that he was not detained or incarcerated when he filed it and that he had submitted the action in person at the courthouse. He asked the court to reopen the case and transfer it to New Jersey. The court treated the filing as a motion for relief from a judgment or order under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b), which allows relief for specified reasons such as mistake, newly discovered evidence, fraud, a void judgment, satisfaction of a judgment, or other extraordinary circumstances.
The court reviewed its records and found that the complaint had arrived by mail in an envelope addressed to the court with a Rikers Island return address for Lurch. The court therefore stated that it appeared Lurch was incarcerated when he filed the action. It concluded that, even under the more flexible reading given to filings by people without lawyers, Lurch had not shown that any of the first five grounds in Rule 60(b) applied.
The court separately considered Rule 60(b)(6), the provision allowing relief for other reasons that justify it. It explained that this provision requires a motion to be filed within a reasonable time and requires extraordinary circumstances. The court found that Lurch had not demonstrated extraordinary circumstances warranting relief.
Disposition
The court denied Lurch’s motion for reconsideration. It did not reopen or transfer the case. The order stated that Lurch may file a new civil action in the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey to pursue his false-arrest and excessive-force claims. The court’s case under docket number 20-CV-9329 was closed and stated that it would accept only documents directed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, subject to the conditions described in the order.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.