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 deadline to serve Kedar and ordered Orange County to provide information to help locate him.
The order directly affected Desean J. Owens by extending his deadline to serve Imam Malik Kedar and denying fee-free appeal status. It directed Orange County to provide information to help locate or serve Kedar.
What happened
Desean J. Owens sued Imam Malik Kedar and Orange County under a federal civil-rights law, claiming violations of his constitutional rights. Owens is representing himself and is not paying the filing fee. Several attempts to serve Kedar with the lawsuit were unsuccessful.
The court extended Owens’s deadline to serve Kedar several times. In this order, it extended the deadline again, to March 25, 2024, and ordered Orange County to identify the organization used to hire contractors like Kedar or provide payment-related address information if no such organization exists.
Judge Vincent L. Briccetti also ruled that any appeal would not be taken in good faith and denied Owens permission to appeal without paying the filing fee. The order did not decide whether Owens’s constitutional claims were valid.
The detailed version
- Owens v. Orange County Jail · No. 7:22-cv-06487
- Vincent Briccetti
- Jan. 26, 2024
Background
Desean J. Owens brought claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, a federal law allowing claims against people who violate constitutional rights while acting under state authority. Owens is proceeding without a lawyer and without paying the filing fee. The defendants named in the caption are Imam Malik Kedar and Orange County.
The court previously directed the U.S. Marshals Service to serve Kedar and Orange County. Service on Kedar was unsuccessful. Orange County supplied a new address, but additional attempts also failed. Orange County told the court that it would not accept service for Kedar because he was an independent contractor for the County. It also suggested that his name was Kedar Abdul-Malik rather than Malik Kedar, but did not have another address for him.
The court extended Owens’s deadline to serve Kedar multiple times. The latest unsuccessful attempt showed that the property manager at the address where Kedar was to be served said Kedar had moved out approximately eighteen months earlier.
Court’s Actions
The court extended Owens’s deadline under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 4(m), which governs the time for serving a defendant, to March 25, 2024.
The court also directed Orange County to submit a letter by February 8, 2024, providing either:
1. the name of the organization the County uses to hire individual contractors like Kedar; or 2. if no such organization exists, the address connected with how Kedar receives or received payment from the County for his services.
The court further certified under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(a)(3) that an appeal from this order would not be taken in good faith. It therefore denied Owens permission to appeal without paying the filing fee.
Effect of the Order
This was a procedural order about serving Kedar and obtaining information that might assist with service. It did not decide the merits of Owens’s constitutional claims against Kedar or Orange County. Judge Vincent L. Briccetti signed the order on January 26, 2024.
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.