Owens v. Orange County Jail
- Vincent Briccetti
- 7:22-cv-06487
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 3
In Owens v. Kedar, Judge Briccetti extended the service deadline and denied permission to appeal without paying fees.
Desean J. Owens and Imam Malik Kedar; the order extended the time for serving Kedar and addressed whether Owens could appeal without paying fees.
What happened
In Owens v. Kedar and Orange County, Desean J. Owens brought constitutional-rights claims under a federal civil-rights law against Imam Malik Kedar and Orange County. Owens was representing himself and was not required to pay filing fees.
The U.S. Marshals Service made several unsuccessful attempts to serve Kedar. The court repeatedly extended the deadline, but Kedar still had not been served and Owens had not requested another extension.
Judge Briccetti extended Owens’s deadline to serve Kedar to February 5, 2024. The court also denied fee-free status for any appeal, finding that an appeal from the order would not be taken in good faith.
The detailed version
- Owens v. Orange County Jail · No. 7:22-cv-06487
- Vincent Briccetti
- Dec. 6, 2023
Background
Desean J. Owens, who was representing himself and was not required to pay filing fees, brought claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, a federal law allowing claims for violations of constitutional rights by state actors. The defendants named in the caption were Imam Malik Kedar and Orange County.
The court had directed the U.S. Marshals Service to serve the defendants. Service on Kedar was unsuccessful. Orange County provided a new address for Kedar but later told the court that it would not accept service for him because he was an independent contractor for the County. Orange County did not have another address, but suggested that his name was Kedar Abdul-Malik rather than Malik Kedar. The court directed another service attempt using that name.
The court repeatedly extended the deadline for service under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 4(m), which governs the time allowed to serve a defendant. The latest prior deadline was December 5, 2023. The docket still did not show that Kedar had been served, and Owens had not requested another extension.
Ruling
The court extended Owens’s deadline to serve Kedar to February 5, 2024. The order stated that Owens should request another extension if the Marshals Service had not served Kedar by that court-ordered deadline.
The court also 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 fee-free status for purposes of an appeal.
The order addressed service of process and appeal-related filing status. It did not decide the underlying constitutional-rights claims.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.