Daker v. Head et al

Filing 214

ORDER granting Defendants' 169 Motion for Protective Order. Denying as moot Defendants' 209 Motion for Extension of Time, and 211 Motion Request for Telephone Status Conference. Defendants are hereby relieved from responding to any of Plaintiff's pending or subsequent motions and filings in this action, including those docketed on June 9, 2020, unless otherwise ordered to do so by this Court. Signed by Magistrate Judge Benjamin W. Cheesbro on 6/23/2020. (ca)

FILED
John E. Triplett, Acting Clerk
United States District Court

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF GEORGIA
STATESBORO DIVISION

By CAsbell at 2:18 pm, Jun 23, 2020

WASEEM DAKER,
Plaintiff,

CIVIL ACTION NO.: 6:14-cv-47

v.
PATRICK HEAD, et al.,
Defendants.

ORDER
Presently before the Court is Defendants’ Motion for Protective Order. Doc. 169. After
considering Defendants’ Motion, Plaintiff’s Response thereto, doc. 192, and Defendants’ Reply,
doc. 196, and for good cause, this Court GRANTS Defendants’ Motion. Defendants are hereby
relieved from responding to any of Plaintiff’s pending or subsequent motions and filings in this
action, including those docketed on June 9, 2020, unless otherwise ordered to do so by this
Court.
“District courts have inherent power to manage their dockets.” Velez v. Reynolds, 770 F.
App’x 528, 529 (11th Cir. 2019). Even the “right of access [to the courts] may be
counterbalanced by the traditional right of courts to manage their dockets and limit abusive
filings.” Cofield v. Ala. Pub. Serv. Comm’n, 936 F.2d 512, 517 (11th Cir. 1991). The Eleventh
Circuit has recognized that “courts may take other, more creative, actions to discourage
hyperactive litigators as long as some access to the courts is allowed.” Id. at 518. Furthermore,
it is within the Court’s authority to change the time for a party to respond to a pending motion.
See Local R. 7.5.

As repeatedly stated by the Eleventh Circuit, “Waseem Daker is . . . a serial litigant who
has clogged the federal courts with frivolous litigation by submit[ting] over a thousand pro se
filings in over a hundred actions and appeals in at least nine different federal courts.” Daker v.
Robinson, 802 F. App’x 513, 514 (11th Cir. 2020) (citation and quotations omitted); see also
Daker v. Toole, 138 S. Ct. 234, 234 (2017) (“[P]etitioner has repeatedly abused this Court’s
process.”). In this case alone, Plaintiff has filed over twenty motions in the past six months,
many of them seeking similar relief as previously filed motions. Plaintiff’s filings with the Court
in this case have become overly burdensome. Plaintiff’s filings are often boilerplate, duplicative,
and tangential to the merits of Plaintiff’s claims. Accordingly, the Court finds the requested
relief in the form of Defendants being relieved from responding to Plaintiff’s pending or
subsequent motions and filings in this action, unless otherwise directed to do so by this Court, is
appropriate in this circumstance. The Court is not limiting Plaintiff’s right of access, but rather
is relieving Defendants from the burden of responding to an overly litigious Plaintiff. This is a
narrow and circumscribed limitation that preserves Plaintiff’s ability to access the courts while
managing the Court’s docket and the impacts created by Plaintiff’s deluge of filings.
In light of the above, the Court GRANTS Defendants’ Motion for Protective Order, doc.
169. The Court DENIES as moot Defendants’ Motion for Extension of Time to Respond to
Plaintiff’s June 9, 2020 filings, doc. 209, and Defendants’ Request for Telephone Status
Conference, doc. 211.
SO ORDERED, this 23rd day of June, 2020.

____________________________________
BENJAMIN W. CHEESBRO
UNITED STATES MAGISTRATE JUDGE
SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF GEORGIA

2