Case ID: f-appx_589/html/0813-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "PER CURIAM.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Robin M. SIMS, Plaintiff-Appellant v. Joshua DAVIS, Detective; Kansas City Missouri Police Department, Defendants-Appellees.
    No. 14-2915.
    United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.
    Submitted: Jan. 5, 2015.
    Filed: Jan. 14, 2015.
    Robin M. Sims, Leavenworth, KS, pro se.
    No appearance by appellees.
    Before LOKEN, SMITH, and BENTON, Circuit Judges.
   PER CURIAM.

Kansas inmate Robert M. Sims appeals the district court’s dismissal of his complaint, without prejudice, for failure to timely pay an initial partial filing fee. Pri- or to dismissal, Sims submitted to the district court, as the court had directed, a signed form authorizing the agency having custody of his prison account to withdraw funds and forward payment to the Clerk of Court, “in accord with 28 U.S.C. § 1915.” As the district court’s dismissal order did not acknowledge this authorization, we conclude the court abused its discretion by dismissing the case without first determining whether Sims’s failure to pay by the court’s deadline was caused by prison officials’ failure to adhere to his request to remit payment using funds from his account, which would excuse his failure to pay within the time ordered by the court, or by Sims’s failure to leave sufficient funds in the account to timely pay the initial filing fee, which would not. See George v. Tucker, 570 Fed.Appx. 629 (8th Cir.2014).

Sims’s motion to appeal in forma pau-peris is granted, and the dismissal of his complaint is reversed. On remand, the district court is instructed to order Sims to show cause why the fee has not been paid, or take other reasonable steps to determine whether he tried to comply with the court’s fee-payment order.