Ewers v. New York Eye & Ear Hospital
- Laura Swain
- 1:23-cv-02303
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 3
In Ewers v. New York Eye & Ear Hospital, Judge Swain ordered a prisoner authorization or fee payment, denied document requests without prejudice, and denied appeal fee-waiver status.
Dale Ainsley Leo Ewers, a detained plaintiff representing himself, must either pay the filing fees or submit the required prisoner authorization within 30 days to avoid dismissal of the action. His document-production motions were denied without prejudice, and he was denied permission to appeal without prepaying fees.
What happened
In Ewers v. New York Eye & Ear Hospital, Dale Ainsley Leo Ewers filed a civil case without paying the filing fees or submitting a required prisoner authorization. The opinion says he was detained at the Miami-Dade Metro West Detention Center and was representing himself.
The court gave Ewers another 30 days to either pay the $402 filing fees or submit the required prisoner authorization. If he complies, the clerk’s office will process the case; if he does not, the action will be dismissed. The court also denied his requests for document production without prejudice, meaning he may renew them later.
Judge Laura Taylor Swain also ruled that an appeal would not be taken in good faith and denied Ewers permission to appeal without prepaying fees. The court did not decide the underlying claims against New York Eye & Ear Hospital.
The detailed version
- Ewers v. New York Eye & Ear Hospital · No. 1:23-cv-02303
- Laura Swain
- Sept. 25, 2023
Background
Dale Ainsley Leo Ewers brought this action against New York Eye & Ear Hospital while detained at the Miami-Dade Metro West Detention Center in Miami, Florida. He proceeded without a lawyer. He filed the complaint without paying the required filing fees and without submitting either an application to proceed without prepaying those fees or a prisoner authorization.
The court had previously directed Ewers to pay $402 in filing fees or submit a completed application to proceed without prepaying fees and a prisoner authorization within 30 days. Ewers later submitted the fee-waiver application but did not submit the prisoner authorization.
Court’s Order
Because Ewers was representing himself, the court gave him another opportunity to provide the prisoner authorization. The court directed him, within 30 days of the order, either to pay the $402 filing fees or submit the attached prisoner authorization. That authorization would permit the agency holding him to provide his prison-account statement and deduct required payments from his account under the federal prisoner-fee statute.
The court stated that, if Ewers complied, the case would be processed under the clerk’s office procedures. If he failed to comply within the allowed time, the action would be dismissed. The order did not dismiss the action at that time and did not address the merits of Ewers’s claims.
Other Rulings and Disposition
The court denied Ewers’s motions for production of documents, identified as docket entries 2 and 3, without prejudice to renewing them later. The court also certified under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(a)(3) that an appeal from the order would not be taken in good faith and denied permission to appeal without prepaying fees.
Classification
This is a procedural order because it addressed filing-fee and prisoner-authorization requirements, document-production requests, and appellate fee status without deciding the underlying dispute.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.