Nguyen v. N/A-Crime
- Laura Swain
- 1:22-cv-10240
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Nguyen v. N/A-Crime, Judge Swain ordered payment of fees or a completed application to proceed without prepaying them.
Vuth Nguyen, who must either pay the $402 in fees or submit a completed amended application within 30 days to avoid dismissal of the action.
What happened
In Nguyen v. N/A-Crime, Vuth Nguyen filed the action without a lawyer and asked to proceed without paying the filing fees upfront.
Nguyen's application showed that he was not presently employed but left the remaining questions unanswered. The court therefore could not determine whether he was unable to pay the required $402 in fees.
Judge Laura Taylor Swain ordered Nguyen to pay the fees or submit a completed application within 30 days. The court said the action would be dismissed if he did not comply, and no summons would issue at that time.
The detailed version
- Nguyen v. N/A-Crime · No. 1:22-cv-10240
- Laura Swain
- Dec. 7, 2022
Background
Vuth Nguyen brought this civil action without a lawyer. To proceed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, he had to either pay $402 in filing and administrative fees or submit a signed application to proceed without prepaying those fees.
Application for fee waiver
Nguyen submitted an application to proceed without prepaying fees, but he answered only that he was not presently employed and left the remaining questions unanswered. Because the application was incomplete and Nguyen provided no other information about his financial circumstances, the court could not conclude that he was unable to afford the fees.
Order
The court ordered Nguyen, within 30 days of the order, either to pay the $402 in fees or submit an amended application. The amended application had to include facts establishing that he could not pay the fees, answer all applicable questions, and identify docket number 22-CV-10240 (LTS). If the court granted the amended application, Nguyen would be allowed to proceed without prepaying the fees.
No summons would issue at that time. The court stated that the action would be dismissed if Nguyen failed to comply within the permitted time. The court also certified that an appeal would not be taken in good faith and denied fee-waiver status for purposes of an appeal.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.