Gentile v. Latona
- Laura Swain
- 1:22-cv-08411
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Gentile v. Latona, Judge Swain dismissed Gentile’s civil-rights claims with prejudice after he declined to amend them.
Joseph J. Gentile, Jr.’s Section 1983 claims were dismissed with prejudice; any state-law claims he may have asserted were not heard by the federal court, and the defendants were no longer required to litigate those claims in this action.
What happened
In Gentile v. Latona, Joseph J. Gentile, Jr. brought claims under a federal civil-rights law against Edward Burnett and other defendants. The court had previously found that his allegations did not state a valid claim and gave him time to file an amended complaint.
Gentile did not file an amended complaint and sent a letter saying he did not intend to do so. The court dismissed his claims under that civil-rights law with prejudice, meaning those claims cannot be brought again in this case. It also declined to decide any state-law claims and denied special permission to appeal without paying court fees.
Chief Judge Laura Taylor Swain entered the order, directed the clerk to enter judgment, and certified that any appeal would not be taken in good faith.
The detailed version
- Gentile v. Latona · No. 1:22-cv-08411
- Laura Swain
- Apr. 17, 2023
Background
The court had previously ruled that Joseph J. Gentile, Jr.’s allegations failed to state a claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, the federal law that allows certain civil-rights claims against state actors. The court gave him permission to file an amended complaint and later extended the deadline by 30 days.
Gentile did not file an amended complaint before the extended deadline expired. In a letter received by the court on March 27, 2023, he said that he wished to withdraw the action with prejudice and that he intended to pursue only a separate petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254. The opinion states that the separate petition had been transferred to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit as a successive petition.
Ruling
The court dismissed Gentile’s Section 1983 claims with prejudice for failure to state a claim on which relief could be granted. The court also declined under 28 U.S.C. § 1367(c) to exercise supplemental jurisdiction—the authority to hear related state-law claims—over any state-law claims Gentile may have been asserting.
The court certified under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(a)(3) that any appeal would not be taken in good faith and therefore denied permission to appeal without paying the filing fees. It directed the clerk to enter judgment.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.