Ramos v. United States Bureau of Prison
- Laura Swain
- 1:21-cv-01050
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Ramos v. United States Bureau of Prisons, Judge Swain dismissed the complaint after Ramos failed to file an amended complaint and denied appeal fee-waiver status.
The order dismissed Elio Ortegas Ramos’s complaint and denied him permission to appeal without paying the filing fee. The defendants were not required to litigate the unresolved claims in this action.
What happened
In Elio Ortegas Ramos v. United States Bureau of Prisons, et al., the court had allowed Ramos to amend only certain excessive-force and involuntary-medication claims after dismissing other claims. The court later gave him additional time to comply.
Ramos filed several letters, but the court found them unclear and noncompliant with its earlier order. He never filed an amended complaint, and the court said it remained unclear whether he could do so.
Chief Judge Laura Taylor Swain dismissed the complaint for failure to state a claim under the federal screening statute. She also denied Ramos permission to appeal without paying the filing fee, certifying that an appeal would not be taken in good faith.
The detailed version
- Ramos v. United States Bureau of Prison · No. 1:21-cv-01050
- Laura Swain
- Mar. 7, 2022
Background
The court had previously dismissed Ramos’s false-arrest and malicious-prosecution claims, as well as claims that he was medicated against his will at Manhattan Psychiatric Center. It gave him 60 days to file an amended complaint addressing only specified excessive-force claims and claims concerning involuntary medication at Mid-Hudson Forensic Psychiatric Center, Bellevue Hospital, and Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center.
Ramos then filed three letters. The court found that they were unclear and did not address its prior order. On January 26, 2022, the court treated those letters as requests for more time, despite doubts that Ramos could correct the deficiencies, and granted him an additional 30 days to file an amended complaint. Ramos filed two more letters, but the court found that they also were unclear and failed to comply with the earlier order. He did not file an amended complaint.
Ruling
The court dismissed the complaint for failure to state a claim under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(e)(2)(B)(ii), which requires screening of certain complaints filed without the filing fee. The opinion does not describe a merits decision on the remaining claims; the dismissal followed Ramos’s failure to file an amended complaint that complied with the court’s instructions.
Chief Judge Laura Taylor Swain certified under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(a)(3) that any appeal would not be taken in good faith and denied Ramos permission to proceed without paying the filing fee for an appeal. The Clerk was directed to mail Ramos a copy of the order and record service on the docket.
Earlier Related Proceeding
The opinion also refers to a prior related proceeding in which the court dismissed claims against the United States Bureau of Prisons on sovereign-immunity grounds, dismissed claims against New York State and the “City Correctional Systems Parole and Health Department” on constitutional and statutory grounds, denied a challenge to a conviction because authorization from the appropriate appeals court was required, and dismissed without prejudice an involuntary-medication claim after Ramos did not amend his complaint.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.