Burns v. Un-named employees of New York City Corrections and Health and…
Burns v. Un-named employees of New York City Corrections and Health and Hospitals
- Analisa Torres
- 1:22-cv-02371
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Burns v. Un-named Employees of New York City Corrections and Health and Hospitals, Chief Judge Swain ordered a prisoner to pay fees or submit authorization to proceed without prepayment.
George E. Burns, a detained prisoner representing himself, must either pay the required fees or submit the required prisoner authorization for this civil case to proceed.
What happened
Burns v. Un-named Employees of New York City Corrections and Health and Hospitals concerns George E. Burns, a detained prisoner representing himself in a civil case. He submitted an application to proceed without paying fees upfront but did not submit the required authorization for prison-account deductions.
The order gave Burns 30 days to either pay $402 in fees or submit the prisoner authorization. No summons would issue yet, and the case would be processed if he complied; if he did not, the action would be dismissed.
Chief Judge Laura Taylor Swain also found that any appeal from this order would not be taken in good faith and denied permission to appeal without prepaying fees.
The detailed version
- Burns v. Un-named employees of New York City Corrections and Health and… · No. 1:22-cv-02371
- Analisa Torres
- Mar. 24, 2022
Background
George E. Burns, who was detained in the George R. Vierno Center on Rikers Island, filed this civil action without a lawyer. He submitted an application to proceed without prepaying filing fees, commonly called an IFP application, but did not submit the separate prisoner authorization required by federal law.
Order
The court ordered Burns, within 30 days of the order, to do one of two things: pay $402 in fees, consisting of a $350 filing fee and a $52 administrative fee, or complete and submit the prisoner authorization. That authorization would allow the facility to deduct the $350 filing fee from his account in installments and would require submission of certified copies of his account statements for the previous six months.
The court directed that no summons issue at that time. If Burns complied, the Clerk’s Office would process the case under its procedures. If he failed to comply within the permitted time, the action would be dismissed. The order did not decide the underlying claims against the unnamed employees.
Appeal and additional notice
Judge Laura Taylor Swain certified that an appeal from the order would not be taken in good faith and denied permission to appeal without prepaying fees. The order also warned that certain future dismissals of prisoner cases can count as strikes under the federal Prison Litigation Reform Act, and that three strikes generally restrict a prisoner’s ability to file future federal civil actions without prepaying fees, subject to the statute’s imminent-danger exception.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.