Opinion ID: 164119
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Alleged Difficulties with the Prison

Text: 44 On appeal Plaintiff alleges that the district court erred in dismissing his lawsuit because he had done all he could to make the required payments. He contends that he had repeatedly told the district court that he was having trouble getting the financial office at the prison to send the payments to the court. He also complains that he was not granted an evidentiary hearing to establish his compliance. 45 Plaintiff is correct that before dismissing a prisoner's complaint for failure to comply with an order regarding partial payments toward a filing fee, the district court should ordinarily take reasonable steps to ascertain whether the prisoner attempted to comply with the fee order by authorizing prison officials to withdraw required payments. See Wilson v. Sargent, 313 F.3d 1315, 1320-21 (11th Cir.2002) (finding abuse of discretion when district court dismissed for failure to make initial filing fee payment without making inquiry into whether prisoner had attempted to comply with fee order); Hatchet v. Nettles, 201 F.3d 651, 654 (5th Cir.2000) (same). In this case, however, the record supports the findings below that Plaintiff was not attempting to comply with the fee orders, and the district court gave Plaintiff ample opportunity to submit evidence of compliance. 46 The only evidence Plaintiff presented in support of his allegation that the prison was refusing to send his authorized payments is the August 28, 2001, letter he sent to the prison's legal department, in which he states that he had previously authorized the prison to remove 20% from his account as money was deposited. Id., Doc. 189, at 10-13. But he provided the court with no documents purporting to authorize such withdrawals. And the very letter upon which he relies is actually strong evidence of his lack of cooperation. In it, Plaintiff states that he is not going to sign any future withdrawal forms, and he tells the prison officials not to remove any of his funds without his authorization. Id. at 10-12. Also probative of Plaintiff's failure to authorize withdrawals to pay the filing fee in this case are copies of his account statements with notations that Plaintiff was under a PLRA court order but had failed to sign a withdrawal-authorization form. See Vol. II, Doc. 123, at 4; id., Doc. 141, at 4; Vol. III, Doc. 153, at 4; and id., Doc. 183, at 13. (It is not clear, however, whether these notations refer to the PLRA orders in this case or in one of Plaintiff's numerous other cases pending in district court.) 47 Further suggesting that Plaintiff was not truly seeking to pay the filing fee by authorizing payment by the prison is his conduct once his payments began in June 2002. Plaintiff makes no claim that the prison hampered him in making payments from that time on. Yet he still failed miserably to comply with his obligations. Although he received deposits of $90.79 from June 2002 until the dismissal of his case, Plaintiff paid only $7.14 toward his filing fees. 48 The magistrate judge also properly took judicial notice that in several other cases before the same district court, Plaintiff had refused to authorize the prison to make withdrawals for court fees. Plaintiff has not disputed this fact. 49 Moreover, even assuming the truth of Plaintiff's allegation that the prison failed to make authorized payments, this does not excuse him from his obligations under the fee orders. If Plaintiff had in fact directed the prison to make the required payments and the prison had failed to do so, it was still Plaintiff's obligation to notice this lapse and not spend the money until the required payments were made to the court: 50 A prisoner who fails to ensure that the required sum is remitted in one month must make it up later.... If in a given month the prison fails to make the required distribution from the trust account, the prisoner should notice this and refrain from spending the funds on personal items until they can be applied properly. 51 Lucien, 141 F.3d at 776. Plaintiff did not refrain from spending the monies owed to the district court; rather, he repeatedly drained his account by making discretionary withdrawals. Had Plaintiff retained the money he owed for filing fees in this case, he would have had sufficient funds in his account to remit all the past-due amounts when the Motion to Dismiss was filed (at which time he managed to make a payment). 52 As for Plaintiff's contention that he was entitled to an evidentiary hearing before dismissal, we hold that the district court did not abuse its discretion in proceeding on the record before it. By issuing repeated orders to show cause and providing Plaintiff with multiple opportunities to produce a copy of any proper authorization that had been ignored by the prison, the district court went beyond the procedures recommended in Wilson, 313 F.3d at 1320-22, and Hatchet, 201 F.3d at 654 ([T]he district court should take reasonable steps to ascertain whether the prisoner has complied with the order by allowing objections to a magistrate judge's report, issuing a show-cause order, communicating by telephone, fax, or e-mail with officials of the custodial institution, issuing an order to the custodial institution, or using any other method designed to obtain the relevant information. (citations omitted)).