Opinion ID: 184273
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Third Strike

Text: In addition, the Seventh Circuit dismissed appellant's appeal in Hafed v. Government of the State of Israel, No. 08-2744. That court first denied appellant's motion for leave to proceed ifp under Lee v. Clinton, 209 F.3d 1025, 1026-27 (7th Cir.2000), that is, as frivolous. See Government of the State of Israel, No. 08-2744, Doc. 17. When appellant did not pay the filing fee, the Seventh Circuit dismissed the appeal for nonpayment. See id., Doc. 19. A circuit court's dismissal of an appeal on the ground of frivolousness would fall under § 1915(e)(2)(B)(i) and would count as a strike. See Jennings, 175 F.3d at 780-81. In Government of the State of Israel, however, the Seventh Circuit did not actually dismiss the appeal as frivolous, but for nonpayment of the filing fee, that is, for failing to prosecute the appeal. A dismissal for failure to prosecute would not necessarily be a strike because [e]ach of the three categories of strikes in [§ 1915(g)] involves dispositions that look to the merits of the suit[, but] a dismissal for failure to prosecute is made without regard to the merits of the claim[.] Butler v. Dep't of Justice, 492 F.3d 440, 442-44 (D.C.Cir.2007) (holding, where there was no indication in the procedural history that the court had held that the five prior appeals dismissed for failure to prosecute were frivolous, that the dismissals did not count as strikes under § 1915(g)). However, in Thompson v. Drug Enforcement Administration, 492 F.3d 428, 433 (D.C.Cir. 2007), the D.C. Circuit held that a dismissal for failure to prosecute was a strike where the circuit court had previously declared the appeal frivolous when it denied the prisoner's motion to proceed ifp. The D.C. Circuit rejected as hypertechnical the prisoner's argument that the appeal was formally dismissed ... for failure to prosecute, rather than for frivolousness[, because b]ut for the judge declaring it frivolous, [the prisoner's] appeal would have gone forward. Id. In our view, the Seventh Circuit's determination that the appeal in Government of the State of Israel was frivolous when it denied appellant's motion for ifp can properly be termed the but for cause of that court's subsequent dismissal, and we agree with the D.C. Circuit's conclusion that it would be hypertechnical to hold that the resulting dismissal for nonpayment was not a strike. See Thompson, 492 F.3d at 433; see also O'Neal v. Price, 531 F.3d 1146, 1152 (9th Cir.2008) (holding that a district court has `dismissed' the prisoner's case for purposes of § 1915(g) when the court denies the prisoner's application to file the action without prepayment of the filing fee on the ground that the complaint is frivolous, malicious or fails to state a claim, and thereupon terminates the complaint (quoting § 1915(g)). This strike also counts from May 26, 2009, when the Supreme Court dismissed appellant's petition for writ of certiorari. See Hafed v. State of Israel, ___ U.S. ___, 129 S.Ct. 2439, 174 L.Ed.2d 226 (2009) (Mem.) (No. 08-9403). Having concluded that appellant had three clear strikes as of May 26, 2009, before he filed No. 09-1365 on August 17, 2009, we do not address his arguments in that appeal on their merits. See Dubuc, 314 F.3d at 1208-10.