Felton v. Mays et al

Filing 30

MEMORANDUM Order Signed by the Honorable Milton I. Shadur on 5/10/2017. Mailed notice (mc, )

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS
EASTERN DIVISION

JOSEPH ANDREW FELTON,
Plaintiff,
v.
LOIS MAYS, et al.,

Defendants.

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Court of Appeals Case No. 17-1286
(Dist. Ct. Case No. 16 C 11488)

MEMORANDUM ORDER
To refer to Joseph Felton ("Felton"), the plaintiff in the above-numbered District Court
case that is currently the subject of a pending appeal under the number also cited in the caption
here, as a "frequent filer" was characterized by this Court's brief January 10, 2017 memorandum
order (the "Order") as an "understatement," for the Order reported Felton's acknowledged listing
of no fewer than 11 other lawsuits that he had filed during the years 2014 through 2016. It might
then have been expected that the pro se Complaint Felton filed in this case would have drawn on
his litigation experience to set out a claim or claims with the degree of "plausibility" called for by
what this Court quite often refers to as the "Twombly-Iqbal canon." Instead, as the Order (one of
several memorandum orders that this Court found it necessary to issue during the pendency of
the case at the District Court level) stated at its pages 1 and 2:
Regrettably the litigiousness that appears to be reflected by such numerosity is not
Felton's only problem. His current Complaint's Statement of Claim (Complaint
¶ IV) displays a hodgepodge of charges against a group of purported
co-conspirators who assertedly (1) cashed checks that didn't belong to them,
(2) took real estate, CDs, stocks and bonds, (3) engaged in "other money
transactions falsely" -- and on and on. But Felton's rambling narration concludes
with one crystal-clear statement, that contained in Complaint ¶ V describing the
modest relief that he seeks:

Pain & suffering
$25 million
compensatory & punitive damages.
Those purely conclusory allegations, asserted without any background factual anchoring
(even of a summary nature) to enable this Court to conduct a threshold evaluation of the
Complaint's "plausibility," caused this Court to dismiss the Complaint as frivolous in the legal
sense -- and that dismissal, when coupled with the earlier dismissals of prior lawsuits by Felton
that also ran afoul of the standards set out in 28 U.S.C. § 1915(g) ("Section 1915(g)"),
constituted his third "strike" for Section 1915(g) purposes. And that being the case, the same
January 10 Order not only dismissed the action but stated in its final paragraph:
That provision [Section 1915(g)] precludes him from bringing any further civil
action or appeal under 28 U.S.C. § 1915 unless he is then "under imminent of
serious physical injury."
When Felton then filed a motion to proceed on appeal in forma pauperis ("IFP") before
the Court of Appeals on April 28, 2017, that court transferred the motion to this District Court
for a ruling. Because Felton's extended narrative in his Complaint ¶ IV "Statement of Claim"
includes nothing to suggest that he is "under imminent danger of serious physical injury," his
appeal does not entitle him to proceed IFP before the Court of Appeals -- instead he must, like
any other litigant, prepay the appellate filing fees. This Court accordingly denies Felton's
motion, but like the Court of Appeals it reminds him that he must refile the motion in that court
pursuant to Fed. R. App. P. 24.

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Milton I. Shadur
Senior United States District Judge
Date: May 10, 2017
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