and our final case for this morning is robertson against french case that dismissal happened just days before trial which was scheduled to occur on mr robertson's constitutional claim which arose under the th amendment based upon mr robertson's having been thrown  d a filthy cell for six days deprived of medication and ultimately attempting suicide so i ask mr belin brink i understand that after mr robertson filed his  p application the district court here judge bruce entered an order directing the prison to pay the initial filing fee out of the out of his account and that the order directed the court clerk to mail a copy of it to the attention of the prison's trust fund office is that correct yes your honor that's correct so as far as mr robertson knew all of that had happened wasn't in his control he was not assigned to the responsibility of mailing that order to the prison no your honor that is correct all right and so as far as he knew if that order had properly been mailed then when the four thousand dollars hits his account the entire filing fee would have been paid his twenty percent of four thousand eight hundred dollars considerably more than the filing fee of three hundred and fifty dollars yes that's correct well so so the failure of the court clerk or whoever stole your it was either the court clerk or the failure of the prison to log it in properly actually led to the situation we're now in because he would have had his feet long since paid from the time the four thousand dollars got into his account right he would have had to pay to your honor and this is perhaps not to the benefit of my client to say this but i think we would probably still be in the same situation but the question would be the same because the question here is whether mr robertson was required to disclose settlement agreement at the outset of the case so whether  allegation of poverty was true or untrue right and i was actually in some ways approaching this from the back end because there are two things the district court criticized him for one not listing what is sort of an account receivable a receivable that yet a legal right to but just hadn't received and the other was a failure to update and i was thinking that on the failure to update the way the statute works it's self updating unless somebody is trying to conceal and puts the funds you know outside of the prison or whatever and there's no allegation that that mr robertson was doing that so i think this case is really only about the st did he have an there is one question i think on the long form that could call for that i think it's a question regarding whether there's any agency or department that that owes money to him that he may receive by which to pay i don't think he had any idea at that point of when he would actually receive the settlement money so it so i get that but it does seem to me that disclosure is different from you and if he had told the court that at some undefined time the state of illinois was supposed to pay him four thousand dollars the court might still have imposed the same initial partial filing fee a it's the same kind of verging on the brink of bankruptcy at this point so maybe it was a shaky or expectation that should have been but i still think you know the language in the the long form is the identification of every person business or organization when you money and the amount oh well surely the state owed him money on that point your honor though mr robertson did not fill out the long form nor did the district court require him to fill out right for me to get it accepted what was essentially a five paragraph handwritten note attesting to what mr robertson believed he needed to disclose and there was nothing in that that was on true so that does this take us two years scienter point because i gather mr robbins robertson is illiterate there's some dispute on that in the record mr robertson maintains that he is a literate the state believes that i think he's a lingering to some extent but ok his pleadings in the case were drafted by other prisoners he has a very limited reading ability i don't think that's in dispute was just plain drafted by and tell us where it was your honor on that issue of of  his role there's this these record references to the fact that there were in previous settlement agreements that had been listed and i have p forms and if we cross reference the case numbers from the settlement agreement in this case it takes us to different i have ps obviously than this one so i think we can conclude from the record and correct me if i'm wrong that the settlement agreement that he had referenced an earlier instances is not the settlement agreement in this case is that right yes that's correct your honor and as far as i understand from the record the settlement agreements that he had disclosed in other cases for amounts that you've actually received at that point that he was disclosing them  that's not entirely clear from the record but it pages i think ninety two of the appendix it he says received settlement from cook county circuit court case number or whatever it  was so that would i mean that your basic argument as i understand it is that an unsophisticated person might not realize didn't count receivable is the kind of thing that you no even if you made a mistake by not listing it seems he probably did make a mistake by not listing it it wasn't done with any site enter and if you had some say and your requirement then dismissal of the case shouldn't ha that's correct and if we back up even further just to the disclosure itself section one hundred and fifteen a one what it actually requires of the allegation of poverty which is that the basis for the dismissal here was that the quote allegation of poverty was untrue the allegation of poverty itself what's required is a statement of all assets such prisoner possess and i think that there should be a real question here as to whether the settlement agreement that mr that mr robertson had was actually an asset that needed to be i mean if we're talking about bankruptcy we would think it was an asset wouldn't really an expectation of payment from the that money that he didn't have yet was an asset i mean i'm just thinking to myself if you went outside to the federal plaza in front of the post office new ask people that question how know you are saying that but if you didn't know it was an asset are you arguing for a strict liability standard here i think it's a strict liability standard by ideas that show abuse of the eye if people process if it's strict liability we're going to say we actually don't care what you know and what you don't know you could be drooling on the bed but we're still going to say you've lied to the court the word lie implies to me so i enter well i think that there is science or in this case based on the facts of this case because what ended up happening was if you did not disclose this asset the statute is clear that you must disclose our assets but he has to have known it was an asset in the distinction between this case and the ones to which judge brennan referred is that in the other cases the record seems to indicate that he already had the settlement money that is a commonsense distinction that an unsophisticated person might draw well in terms of the other cases for example in case number eleven c two thousand seven hundred and seventy two he actually used his own type version of the short form which asked individuals to disclose any adam o b o real estate stock run security trash jewelry our work or other financial instrument or thing of value that i own financial instrument you just entered into a legal contract or money and so he actually disclosed those settlements in two other cases but he had the money that's i want you to tell me why that a person who doesn't know anything about money would know that money that you don't have is money that you do have because of this court's precedents and thomas versus general motors i didn't realize he was reading this court's opinions well you're still required to understand what the law is but does that mean that you've lied to the court or you were mistaken it might mean that you're mistaken but in this instance it means that right so i see in your steak and if you're mistaken in your filling this out is it the state's position that it doesn't matter that you still proceed if you are clearly mistaken and you put evidence forward of that mistake then no you would probably still be able to perceive it would proceed it would ok and what's the evidence that he isn't just mistaken here other than the cases where he had settlements where he had received the money yes and that's very have received the money right if we don't think those are the same then what other evidence you have we also have the fact that the district court asked in its role to show  order for why it should not be dismissed for reasons why this was a mistake he did not put forward any sort of affidavit or any other evidence saying something was a mistake or a lie so our last way is the fact that there were these two prior settlements there was the payments of the settlement amounts and mr robertson proceeded to pay the amounts ignoring what the ip statute says which is that the presenter shares the liability for paying the filing fee and us courts it doesn't say it has to accept also there's the court order i'm very bothered by this there's the court order directing the prison to pay and in fact the p l r a very specifically what's this responsibility on the prisons exactly so that the money will come in directly out of the prisoner's account once he has taken the step of filing an action and federal court in the order directs the court clerk to mail a copy of it to the attention of the trust fund offices to see order of july th two thousand and fourteen and if that had been done it really wouldn't have been in mr robertson's control the initial filing fee would have been paid when the settlement money hits as a cow the rest of the filing fee would have been paid because it would have been comfortably inside the twenty percent number it all would have worked the way this is supposed to so it seems the state is making mr robinson robertson robertson responsible for either the courts or the prisons missteps while names wrong because it would have gotten this payment  and the case would have gone to trial ultimately about the p r a and this court's decision and say that it is the presenter who's your prior to pay the full amount of the filing fee and that the prisoner shall be required to make the monthly payments these sorts of for ahead and hold that money back or you can do an offender authorization for a payment form which mr robertson knew how to do and the record there are examples of him using those authorization for payment forms an order to receive things like a magazine subscriptions were jewelry why would he why would he know to do that when he was told that the court has ordered this to happen so he has to babysit the court so what he has to do i believe that it is still has  responsibility to loan out to harrison be careful what you wish for what you are now saying is that there needs to be a rule in all illinois prisons that every month every prisoner involved in litigation has to bombard the office that runs the prisoner's accounts with requests have you really sent my money to the court month in and month out there have to be requests because you can never count on the prison can the prisoner has to check with the prison congress was quite clear that the press never themselves has to know it's his and how it is not the responsibility of the state of illinois or the prisoner's mother anybody else so in that sense that's not surprising of course congress was trying to i would say colossally unsuccessfully betroth congress was trying to create a disincentive for this kind of prisoner litigation absolutely but it's his it's his money no matter who transmits it and i would think that under and louche and he does still bear the obligation to either hold that money back or when that settlement came in fill out the authorization form so if i were pro bono lawyer i would think i would advise every prisoner just to send a note every month maybe file a grievance every month and just check to make sure that the money is going to the court lest you have your case dismissed the way this  think if there is a situation where there is a material law and when you are not failing to disclose all of your asset that is not a lie if he didn't know what i thought we agreed that if he's oblivious to the fact that the carriage of the legal characterization of this contract he's not lying if there is actually a mess if there is a genuine mistake that could be shown on this record which there can't be because there is no evidence that there's actually a mistake well the trial court never holds any kind of evidentiary hearing about cannot paid any of the court fees in the present case including the ten dollars thirty three cents partial filing fee and the very following day defendants looked into the situation in fact their motion to dismiss based on the  overall i have a statute that says that you shall this mess at any time without patient poverty as untrue so who discovered that it was a representative of the central district of illinois district court finance department just a few quick points on rebuttal your honor opposing counsel raise the thomas case and i want to point out that there is a significant distinction between that case and this one in thomas in response to a specific question on i have p f location whether he was expecting to receive any money in the future the plaintiff in that case disclosed nothing nine days before he had filed that form made a request for seventy three thousand dollars to be distributed to him from his retirement account i think that that's a very significant difference related to that i'd found the language from mr robertson's prior case where he had disclosed a settlement the question that he answered was have you received money from any other source including judgments in the last six months he answered yes this is from the previous case that you  asked about judge brennan civil action settlement cook county so there was a very specific question there that he answered and i think that that's why he disclosed it  the last point i want to touch on is one that you raised judge would regarding out the responsibility of the the institution to forward the payments actually under section one hundred and fifteen dollars b two there is a requirement that exceeds ten dollars in a given month thank you you're all right thank you very much and you accepted this case as you said we recruited you we appreciate your efforts on behalf of your client thanks as well of course to the state we will take this case under advisement and the court will be