Woodmont Ramapo, LLC v. Parks
- Vincent Briccetti
- 7:23-cv-00594
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 27
In Woodmont Ramapo v. Parks, Judge Briccetti denied Parks’s motion to strike and extended deadlines to respond to the pending remand motion.
Anthony Parks’s ability to respond to Woodmont Ramapo, LLC’s pending motion to remand was affected by the extended deadlines and renewed mailing of the papers. Woodmont Ramapo, LLC’s motion to remand remained undecided in this order, while Parks’s motion to strike was denied.
What happened
Woodmont Ramapo, LLC v. Parks concerns Parks’s removal of a state-court eviction case to federal court. Woodmont Ramapo moved to send the case back to state court, and Parks, who was representing himself, said he had not received the motion.
The court found that Woodmont Ramapo’s service certificate and postal tracking showed the papers were delivered to an individual at Parks’s docket address on May 26, 2023. The court nevertheless mailed Parks another copy, extended his response deadline to July 5, 2023, and extended Woodmont Ramapo’s reply deadline to July 19, 2023. It denied Parks’s motion to strike; it did not decide the motion to remand in this order.
Judge Vincent L. Briccetti also denied Parks permission to appeal without paying the required fees, finding that an appeal would not be taken in good faith.
The detailed version
- Woodmont Ramapo, LLC v. Parks · No. 7:23-cv-00594
- Vincent Briccetti
- June 2, 2023
Background
Anthony Parks removed an eviction proceeding from the Justice Court of the Town of Ramapo to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. Parks was representing himself and was proceeding without paying filing fees. Woodmont Ramapo, LLC moved to remand, meaning to return the case to state court.
The court had previously extended the deadlines for responding to and replying to the remand motion. It also directed Woodmont Ramapo to re-serve previously filed papers at the address listed for Parks on the federal docket because the papers had previously been mailed to a different address.
Woodmont Ramapo’s lawyer filed a certificate stating that the papers had been re-mailed to Parks at the docket address using first-class, certified, and overnight mail. Postal Service tracking information attached to the order stated that the envelopes were delivered to an individual at that address in Maywood, New Jersey, at 10:04 a.m. on May 26, 2023. Parks then moved to strike the remand motion or, alternatively, to require Woodmont Ramapo to serve him with it. In a sworn filing, Parks stated that he had never received the motion and therefore could not respond to it.
Court’s Action
The court found Parks’s statement inconsistent with the service certificate and postal tracking information. Even so, the court mailed Parks another copy of the remand motion and its supporting papers with the order.
The court extended Parks’s deadline to respond to the remand motion to July 5, 2023. It extended Woodmont Ramapo’s deadline to file a reply, if any, to July 19, 2023.
The court denied Parks’s motion to strike. This order did not rule on whether the case should be remanded to state court; it addressed service, deadlines, and the motion to strike.
Appeal and Disposition
The court stated that any appeal from the order would not be taken in good faith and denied Parks permission to appeal without paying the required fees. The Clerk was directed to terminate the motion to strike, and chambers was directed to mail Parks the order and the remand papers.
The opinion text also contains attached filings captioned with Sterlington Holdings, Inc., doing business as Woodgrove at Sterlington, formerly Woodmont Ramapo, LLC. The operative order itself is captioned Woodmont Ramapo, LLC v. Parks.
Read the full 27-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.