Phelps v. United States
- Laura Swain
- 1:23-cv-00318
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 4
In Phelps v. United States, Judge Swain denied an appeal-extension motion, denied appeal fee waivers as moot, and denied amendment requests for lack of jurisdiction.
Darryl Anthony Phelps, who represented himself, and the United States of America. The order governed Phelps’s appeal-related requests and his requests to amend the complaint.
What happened
In Phelps v. United States, Darryl Anthony Phelps represented himself in a case that the court had previously dismissed without prejudice under the filing limit for people with three qualifying dismissals. Phelps filed a timely notice of appeal, asked for more time to appeal, sought permission to appeal without paying fees, and submitted proposed amended pleadings.
Because the notice of appeal was timely, the court denied the request for more time as unnecessary. It denied Phelps’s requests to proceed without paying appeal fees as moot because the court had already ruled that an appeal from the earlier judgment would not be taken in good faith. The court also denied the requests to amend the complaint because the notice of appeal removed the amendment issue from the district court’s authority.
Judge Laura Taylor Swain denied each request as stated in the order and certified that an appeal from this order would not be taken in good faith, so fee-free status was denied for any appeal from this order.
The detailed version
- Phelps v. United States · No. 1:23-cv-00318
- Laura Swain
- Mar. 21, 2023
Background
Darryl Anthony Phelps filed this case without a lawyer against the United States of America. In an earlier order and judgment, the court dismissed the action without prejudice under the Prison Litigation Reform Act’s “three-strikes” filing bar, 28 U.S.C. § 1915(g). The opinion states that the earlier judgment was entered on January 25, 2023.
Phelps then filed several submissions. On February 13, 2023, he moved for more time to file a notice of appeal. On February 14, he filed a notice of appeal, a request to proceed on appeal without paying filing fees, and an application to appeal without paying fees. He later filed an amended complaint, a request for more time to file one, and another pleading submission.
Rulings
The court denied Phelps’s motion for more time to file a notice of appeal as unnecessary. Because the United States was a named defendant, Phelps had 60 days from the January 25 entry of judgment to file a timely notice of appeal. The court calculated the deadline as March 27, 2023, and found that Phelps’s February 14 notice was timely. His motion for an extension was therefore unnecessary.
The court denied Phelps’s motion for leave to proceed without paying fees on appeal and his application to appeal without paying fees as moot. The court had already certified in the earlier order and judgment that an appeal from that decision would not be taken in good faith and had denied fee-free status for that appeal.
The court denied what it construed as Phelps’s requests to file an amended complaint for lack of jurisdiction. A timely notice of appeal gives the appeals court authority over the appealed matters and removes the district court’s control over those matters. Because Phelps had filed a timely notice of appeal, the district court concluded that it could not decide the amendment requests.
Conclusion
The court denied the extension motion as unnecessary, denied the appeal fee requests as moot, and denied the requests to amend for lack of jurisdiction. It also certified under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(a)(3) that an appeal from this order would not be taken in good faith and denied fee-free status for purposes of such an appeal. The order was signed by Chief United States District Judge Laura Taylor Swain.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.