Valentine Shabazz v. Diggs
- Laura Swain
- 1:23-cv-09231
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Valentine Shabazz v. Diggs, Judge Swain dismissed the duplicate complaint without prejudice and transferred its application to proceed without paying fees to the pending case.
Danny Amen Valentine Shabazz, the self-represented plaintiff, and the defendants named as Robert Rza Diggs, et al.; the order also directed the Clerk of Court to transfer the plaintiff’s fee-payment application to the pending related case.
What happened
In Danny Amen Valentine Shabazz v. Robert Rza Diggs, et al., the plaintiff, who was representing himself, filed a complaint alleging that the defendants violated his rights. The court found that he had already filed an identical complaint against the same defendants in a pending case, No. 23-CV-9084.
The court dismissed this complaint without prejudice because it duplicated the pending case. It directed the Clerk of Court to docket the application to proceed without paying fees that the plaintiff filed here as an application in No. 23-CV-9084. The court also stated that an appeal would not be taken in good faith, denied permission to proceed without paying fees for an appeal, and directed the Clerk to enter judgment.
Chief Judge Laura Taylor Swain issued the order on October 23, 2023. The dismissal concerned only the duplicate lawsuit; the order stated that the related case under No. 23-CV-9084 remained pending.
The detailed version
- Valentine Shabazz v. Diggs · No. 1:23-cv-09231
- Laura Swain
- Oct. 23, 2023
Background
Danny Amen Valentine Shabazz, who was appearing without a lawyer, brought an action alleging that the defendants violated his rights. He had previously filed an identical complaint against the same defendants in the Southern District of New York. That earlier case was pending under docket No. 23-CV-9084.
The court noted that the complaints were identical, although the submission in No. 23-CV-9084 contained several exhibits that were not included in this case. Because the two actions raised the same claims, the court concluded that litigating this duplicate lawsuit would serve no useful purpose.
Rulings
The court dismissed the complaint as duplicative of No. 23-CV-9084. It specified that the dismissal was without prejudice to the plaintiff’s pending case under that docket number.
The plaintiff had filed an application to proceed without paying court fees in this action, but had not filed such an application in No. 23-CV-9084. The court directed the Clerk of Court to docket the application filed in this case, identified as ECF 2, in No. 23-CV-9084.
The court certified under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(a)(3) that any appeal from the order would not be taken in good faith. It therefore denied permission to proceed without paying fees for an appeal and directed the Clerk of Court to enter judgment in this case. Chief Judge Laura Taylor Swain signed the order.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.