Nieves v. Ward
- Laura Swain
- 1:22-cv-01861
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 1
In Nieves v. Ward, Judge Swain dismissed Michael Nieves’s duplicate case without prejudice and denied fee-free appeal status.
Michael Nieves’s duplicate action was dismissed without prejudice, and his request to appeal without paying filing fees was denied.
What happened
In Nieves v. Ward, Michael Nieves, representing himself, filed a case against Laura Ward, identified as a Supreme Court justice. The opinion says he was being held in the Bellevue Hospital Prison Ward.
Nieves had already filed an identical complaint against the same defendant. The court had dismissed that earlier case on March 3, 2022, the same day he filed this one.
Judge Laura Taylor Swain dismissed this case without prejudice because it duplicated the earlier case. She also ended all other pending matters and denied Nieves permission to appeal without paying filing fees, finding that an appeal would not be taken in good faith.
The detailed version
- Nieves v. Ward · No. 1:22-cv-01861
- Laura Swain
- Apr. 19, 2022
Background
Michael Nieves brought this action without a lawyer against Laura Ward, identified in the caption as a Supreme Court justice. The opinion states that Nieves was being held in the Bellevue Hospital Prison Ward.
Nieves had previously filed an identical complaint against the same defendant. The court dismissed that earlier case on March 3, 2022, the same day Nieves filed this action. The court determined that the present complaint raised the same claims and that litigating the duplicate case would serve no useful purpose.
Ruling
Judge Laura Taylor Swain dismissed this action without prejudice as duplicative of Nieves’s case under docket number 22-CV-1382 (LTS). The court also terminated all other pending matters in this case.
The court certified under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(a)(3) that any appeal would not be taken in good faith. It therefore denied fee-free status for purposes of an appeal. The opinion does not address the merits of Nieves’s underlying claims.
Read the full 1-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.