Evans v. Juste
- Laura Swain
- 1:22-cv-09765
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 5
In Evans v. Juste, Judge Swain ordered the incarcerated plaintiff to pay filing fees or submit forms to proceed without prepayment.
The incarcerated plaintiff must either pay the required fees or submit the specified application and prisoner authorization within 30 days; otherwise, the action will be dismissed.
What happened
Evans v. Juste is an initial procedural order concerning the filing requirements for an incarcerated plaintiff's civil case. The court did not address the underlying claims.
The plaintiff filed the complaint without paying the required fees and without submitting a completed application to proceed without prepaying fees or the required prisoner authorization. The court gave the plaintiff 30 days to pay $402 or submit both forms. The authorization would allow installment deductions from the plaintiff's account for the $350 filing fee.
Judge Laura Taylor Swain ordered that no answer was required yet and stated that the action would be dismissed if the plaintiff did not comply on time. The court also denied fee-free status for any appeal from the order.
The detailed version
- Evans v. Juste · No. 1:22-cv-09765
- Laura Swain
- Nov. 17, 2022
Background
The plaintiff, who the opinion says is incarcerated at Orange County Jail, filed this civil action without paying the required filing fees and without submitting a completed application to proceed without prepaying fees or a prisoner authorization. The action was brought without a lawyer.
Court’s Order
The court explained that a prisoner must either pay $402 in fees—a $350 filing fee and a $52 administrative fee—or submit a signed application to proceed without prepaying fees and a prisoner authorization. If the court grants the application, the Prison Litigation Reform Act requires the $350 filing fee to be collected in installments from the prisoner’s account. The authorization also directs the correctional facility to provide certified account statements for the prior six months and deduct the required payments.
The court ordered the plaintiff, within 30 days of the order, to either pay the $402 or submit the application and authorization labeled with docket number 22-CV-9765 (LTS). No answer from the defendants was required at that stage. The court stated that the case would be processed under the Clerk’s Office procedures if the plaintiff complied and that the action would be dismissed if the plaintiff did not comply within the allowed time.
Disposition
Judge Laura Taylor Swain certified that an appeal from the order would not be taken in good faith and denied permission to proceed without prepaying fees for purposes of an appeal. The order did not decide the merits of the plaintiff’s claims.
Read the full 5-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.