Henryx v. Radhakrishnan
- Paul Gardephe
- 1:23-cv-00831
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 4
Henryx v. Radhakrishnan: Judge Swain reopened the case, canceled its dismissal, and gave Henryx 30 days to pay or request a fee waiver.
Christopher A. Henryx, who may continue the action if he timely pays the $402 filing fee or submits the required fee-waiver application; the defendants are affected because the case was reopened, although no summonses issue yet.
What happened
In Henryx v. Radhakrishnan, Christopher A. Henryx filed the action without a lawyer. The court had dismissed the case after he neither paid the filing fee nor submitted an application to proceed without prepaying fees.
Henryx asked the court to reopen the case, explaining that he was confined at Gracie Square Hospital and that hospital staff did not mail his documents, including his fee-waiver application. The court accepted that his efforts had been frustrated.
The court granted the request, vacated the dismissal and judgment, and reopened the case. Judge Laura Taylor Swain gave Henryx 30 days to pay the $402 filing fee or submit a completed fee-waiver application; no summonses would issue yet.
The detailed version
- Henryx v. Radhakrishnan · No. 1:23-cv-00831
- Paul Gardephe
- June 12, 2023
Background
Christopher A. Henryx filed this action without a lawyer. On February 8, 2023, the court ordered him, within 30 days, either to submit a completed application to proceed without prepaying fees or to pay the $402 required filing fees. The order warned that failure to comply would result in dismissal.
Henryx did not submit the application or pay the fees. On April 11, 2023, the court dismissed the action and entered judgment.
Motion to Reopen
On June 9, 2023, Henryx moved to reopen the case. He stated that he was confined at Gracie Square Hospital, a psychiatric hospital in Manhattan, and did not have access to a mailbox. He said he had given documents to hospital staff for mailing, including the fee-waiver application, but later learned that the documents had not been mailed.
Ruling
The court granted Henryx’s request to reopen the action. It directed the Clerk of Court to vacate, meaning cancel, the dismissal order and judgment and to reopen the case for further proceedings.
The court gave Henryx 30 days from the date of the order to either pay the $402 filing fee or submit a completed application to proceed without prepaying fees. No summonses were to issue at that time. The court stated that the action would be processed under the Clerk’s procedures if Henryx complied, but that the action would be dismissed if he did not comply within the allowed time.
The court also certified that any appeal from the order would not be taken in good faith and denied fee-waiver status for an appeal. This order addressed reopening the case and filing requirements; it did not decide the underlying claims.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.