Bell v. Ambutrans
- Laura Swain
- 1:22-cv-09126
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Bell v. Ambutrans, Judge Swain denied Bell’s request to reopen a dismissed action, without prejudice to refiling it as a new case.
James Bell, who represented himself, and Ambutrans as the defendant in the dismissed action.
What happened
In Bell v. Ambutrans, James Bell, representing himself, filed a complaint without signing it. The court gave him 30 days to submit an original signature and warned that failing to do so would lead to dismissal.
Bell did not submit the signature within the allowed time. The court dismissed the action without prejudice on January 12, 2023, and the Clerk entered the dismissal on January 17. Bell submitted a signed signature page two days later, without explaining the delay.
Judge Laura Taylor Swain denied Bell’s request to reopen the case. The denial was without prejudice to Bell’s refiling the matter as a new separate civil action. The court also denied him permission to appeal without paying fees, finding that an appeal would not be taken in good faith.
The detailed version
- Bell v. Ambutrans · No. 1:22-cv-09126
- Laura Swain
- Jan. 24, 2023
Background
James Bell, who represented himself, filed the complaint without a signature. In an October 25, 2022 order, the court directed him to submit the complaint’s signature page with an original signature within 30 days. The court warned that failure to comply would result in dismissal.
Bell did not submit the signed page within that period. The court therefore dismissed the action without prejudice in an order and judgment dated January 12, 2023, and entered on January 17, 2023. On January 19, two days after entry of the dismissal, the court received Bell’s signed signature page. The opinion says Bell provided no explanation for the late submission.
Ruling
The court treated the signed page as a possible request to reopen the closed action and denied that request. It held that the request did not fall within the court’s authority to reopen a closed action under Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 59(e) or 60(b), or Local Civil Rule 6.3.
The court denied the request without prejudice to Bell’s refiling the matter as a new separate civil action. It also certified under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(a)(3) that any appeal from the order would not be taken in good faith and denied permission to appeal without paying filing fees.
Effect of the Order
The order did not reopen the dismissed action. It preserved the possibility, stated by the court, of filing a new separate civil action. The opinion concerns the request to reopen the closed case rather than the underlying claims against Ambutrans.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.