Torres v. The Blackstone Group
- Laura Swain
- 1:24-cv-01291
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 1
In Torres v. Blackstone Group, Chief Judge Swain dismissed the action without prejudice because Torres filed without required permission.
Wilfredo Torres, whose case was dismissed without prejudice and whose request to proceed without paying the filing fee on appeal was denied.
What happened
In Torres v. The Blackstone Group, Wilfredo Torres filed a new case without a lawyer and asked to proceed without paying the filing fee. A prior court order barred him from filing any new fee-waiver case without first obtaining permission from the court.
Torres had not requested that permission before filing this case. The court dismissed the action without prejudice because he failed to comply with the earlier order.
Chief Judge Laura Taylor Swain directed the clerk to enter judgment and mail the order to Torres. She also ruled that Torres could not proceed without paying the filing fee if he appealed, because the appeal would not be taken in good faith.
The detailed version
- Torres v. The Blackstone Group · No. 1:24-cv-01291
- Laura Swain
- Mar. 8, 2024
Background
Wilfredo Torres filed this case without a lawyer, requested permission to proceed without paying the filing fee, and did not obtain permission before filing. The opinion states that an earlier order barred Torres from filing any new action without paying the filing fee unless he first obtained leave from the court.
Ruling
The court dismissed the action without prejudice for failure to comply with the earlier filing restriction. “Without prejudice” means the dismissal did not itself bar a future filing, although the prior permission requirement remained relevant to the court’s ruling.
The court directed the clerk to mail the order to Torres, record service on the docket, and enter judgment. Under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(a)(3), the court also certified that an appeal would not be taken in good faith and denied Torres permission to proceed without paying the filing fee for an appeal.
Read the full 1-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.