Pina v. United States
- Barbara Moses
- 1:20-cv-01371
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Pina v. United States, Judge Moses sanctioned pro se plaintiff Pina $100 for violating an order by adding argument to a required notification letter.
Frederick D. Pina was ordered to pay a $100 sanction, and the United States was given an opportunity to respond to Pina’s pending letter-motion.
What happened
In Pina v. United States, Frederick D. Pina repeatedly sought to undo an earlier ruling that dismissed his claim for $146 million in lost business profits from an accident involving his automobile and a United States Postal Service vehicle. His latest request argued that he had properly presented the lost-profits claim to the Postal Service.
The court had allowed Pina to withdraw that request and warned him not to include new arguments in his required notification. Pina declined to withdraw the request and submitted two pages of additional legal argument. The court ordered the United States to respond to the request and said it would decide the request on the existing record if the United States did not respond.
Judge Moses also ordered Pina to pay $100 to the court clerk under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 16(f) because he violated the court’s order. The opinion did not decide Pina’s latest request to vacate the earlier ruling.
The detailed version
- Pina v. United States · No. 1:20-cv-01371
- Barbara Moses
- Apr. 25, 2022
Background
Frederick D. Pina, proceeding without a lawyer, filed another letter-motion seeking to vacate Judge Paul A. Engelmayer’s May 12, 2021 ruling. That earlier ruling dismissed the portion of Pina’s Federal Tort Claims Act claim seeking $146 million in lost business profits arising from an accident between his automobile and a United States Postal Service vehicle.
The opinion states that Pina’s April 1, 2022 filing was his fifth attempt to vacate the earlier ruling and his third attempt based on the argument that a March 16, 2019 letter from his former counsel adequately presented the lost-business-profits claim to the Postal Service. Judge Engelmayer had denied two prior motions raising that argument.
April 15 order and violation
During an April 14 scheduling and status conference, Judge Moses gave Pina an opportunity to withdraw the April 1 letter-motion without penalty. She warned him about the risk of sanctions for continuing to file repetitive motions and directed him to notify the court in writing by April 21 whether he would withdraw the motion. The written April 15 order repeated those directions and expressly stated that the notification could not include new argument about the requested relief.
Pina instead declined to withdraw the motion and included two pages of new legal argument asserting that Judge Engelmayer’s original ruling and later decisions were fundamentally flawed and illegal.
Rulings
The court ordered the United States to respond to Pina’s latest vacatur motion by April 29, 2022. If the United States responded, Pina could reply by May 6; if it did not, the court would decide the motion on the existing record.
Separately, Judge Moses ordered Pina to pay $100 to the court clerk by May 6, 2022, as a sanction under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 16(f) for violating the express order barring additional argument in his notification letter. The opinion did not decide the merits of Pina’s latest request to vacate the earlier dismissal.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.