Buchanan v. Dart et al

Filing 6

MEMORANDUM Order Signed by the Honorable Milton I. Shadur on January 9, 2014.(mr, )

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS
EASTERN DIVISION
Raefell M. Buchanan,
Plaintiff,
v.
Thomas Dart, et al.,
Defendants.

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Case No. 14 C 27

MEMORANDUM ORDER
Raefell M. Buchanan (“Buchanan”) has employed the printed
form that the Clerk’s Office makes available for use by prisoners
advancing claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (“Section 1983”) to sue
Sheriff Tom Dart for the asserted violation of his constitutional
rights and to sue Sheriff Dart, Cook County, the Cook County
Sheriff’s Department and perhaps the Cook County Department of
Correction (“County Jail”) under the auspices of the Americans
with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act.

Buchanan has

accompanied his Complaint with two other Clerk’s-Office-supplied
printed documents:

an In Forma Pauperis Application

(“Application”) and a Motion for Appointment of Counsel
(“Motion”).
To begin with those latter documents, the Application
includes Buchanan’s signature with a date of August 5, 2013 and a
certificate from the fiscal representative at the County Jail
dated October 3, 2013.

By definition that submission does not

comply with the 28 U.S.C. § 1915 (“Section 1915”) requirement

that information be provided as to transactions in a prisoner’s
trust account “for the 6-month period immediately preceding the
filing of the complaint” (Section 1915(a)(2)):

Although the

early portion of that period has been covered, the insufficiency
of the printout is obvious.1
Accordingly Buchanan is ordered to supplement his submission
of the Application with another printout covering the time frame
between October 1 and the date on which his Complaint is treated
as having been filed.

For that purpose, although his documents

were not received in the Clerk’s Office until January 2, 2014 he
is entitled to the benefit of the “mailbox rule,” under which his
lawsuit is treated as having been filed on the earlier date when
he placed the documents in the mail himself or tendered them to
the County Jail authorities for transmission to this District
Court.

When this Court has the necessary information in hand, it

will be in a position to act on Buchanan’s Application.
Meanwhile it is obvious that Buchanan will qualify for the
special type of in forma pauperis (“IFP”) status that Section
1915 specifies for persons in custody, under which they are not
required to pay the $350 filing fee up front but are called on to
pay the fee in future installments.

Because Buchanan’s

substantive allegations appear on their face to satisfy the

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It is equally puzzling that Buchanan’s hand-printed
portion of the Complaint is also dated August 5, although one of
the Complaint’s exhibits bears an October 3 date.
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“plausibility” requirement of the Twombly-Iqbal canon, and
because Buchanan’s Motion satisfies our Court of Appeals’
requirement that such a plaintiff must make a showing as to the
efforts made to obtain counsel on his or her own, this Court has
obtained the name of this member of the trial bar to represent
Buchanan pro bono publico:
Ian Howard Fisher
Schopf & Weiss LLP
1 South Wacker Drive Drive
28th Floor
Chicago, IL 60606
[phone]
In addition, this action is set for an initial status
hearing at 9 a.m. on March 11, 2014 pursuant to this Court’s
contemporaneously issued memorandum order.

Even though

Buchanan’s designated counsel will be expected to make his own
determinations as to the handling of the case, he should be
advised that this Court’s view is that neither the Cook County
Sheriff’s Department nor the Cook County Department of
Corrections is a suable entity, while the responsibility or the
County Jail is vested in Sheriff Dart and not Cook County, so it
would seem likely that Sheriff Dart should be the sole target of
this lawsuit.

___________________________________
Milton I. Shadur
Senior United States District Judge
Dated: January 9, 2014.

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