Court Opinion

ID: 9953623
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-03-22 16:01:06.825686+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:03:05.031480
License: Public Domain

USCA11 Case: 24-10308   Document: 9-1     Date Filed: 03/22/2024   Page: 1 of 4

                                                 [DO NOT PUBLISH]
                                 In the
               United States Court of Appeals
                        For the Eleventh Circuit

                         ____________________

                               No. 24-10308
                         Non-Argument Calendar
                         ____________________

      BENJAMIN VIENT,
                                                    Plaintiﬀ-Appellant,
      versus
      HIGHLANDS NEWS-SUN,

                                                  Defendant-Appellee,

      TIM SMOLARICK, et al.,

                                                          Defendants.

                         ____________________
USCA11 Case: 24-10308      Document: 9-1     Date Filed: 03/22/2024      Page: 2 of 4

      2                      Opinion of the Court                  24-10308

                 Appeal from the United States District Court
                     for the Southern District of Florida
                    D.C. Docket No. 2:19-cv-14012-RLR
                          ____________________

       Before WILSON, JILL PRYOR, and GRANT, Circuit Judges.
      PER CURIAM:
              Appellant Benjamin Vient, proceeding pro se, previously
      sued Highlands News-Sun, bringing copyright infringement
      claims. The district court granted summary judgment to High-
      lands. Over a several month period after the district court granted
      summary judgment, Vient moved for reconsideration five times.
      Each time, the district court denied the motion. On June 1, 2022,
      when the district court denied the fifth motion for reconsideration,
      it instructed the clerk to refuse to accept “all future filings from
      [Vient] with the sole exception of a notice of appeal.”
              On January 30, 2024, Vient filed a notice of appeal in the dis-
      trict court. According to the notice, Vient submitted to the district
      court filings titled “Motion to Correct the Court Record and Proper
      Adjudication of the Corrected Motion” and “Notice for Records
      and Testimony Request Under § 810 of the Federal Judiciary regu-
      lations,” and on December 11, 2023, the district court returned the
      submissions to Vient without adding any entry to the docket in his
      case to reflect that documents had been submitted or rejected. In
      the notice of appeal, Vient stated that he was seeking review of the
USCA11 Case: 24-10308      Document: 9-1     Date Filed: 03/22/2024      Page: 3 of 4

      24-10308               Opinion of the Court                          3

      district court’s “action and response” related to his filings. Vient
      paid a filing fee for the appeal.
              To the extent that Vient has appealed the district court’s or-
      der imposing a filing injunction or the recent rejection of his sub-
      missions, we lack appellate jurisdiction. The district court entered
      the filing injunction on June 1, 2022. Vient’s notice of appeal, which
      was filed in January 2024, is untimely to appeal that order. See Green
      v. Drug Enf’t Admin., 606 F.3d 1296, 1300 (11th Cir. 2010); Fed. R.
      App. P. 4(a)(1)(A). It is possible that Vient sought to appeal the dis-
      trict court’s recent rejection of his submissions. But because the dis-
      trict court’s apparent decision to reject his submissions appears no-
      where on the district court’s docket, we have no district court de-
      cision to review and thus lack jurisdiction on appeal. See 28 U.S.C.
      § 1291.
              We liberally construe pro se filings. See Timson v. Sampson,
      518 F.3d 870, 874 (11th Cir. 2008). Here, we construe Vient’s notice
      of appeal as seeking to challenge the district court’s failure to place
      any notation on the docket reflecting that he sought to file docu-
      ments and that the filings were rejected. The proper vehicle for
      making such a challenge is a petition for mandamus. We thus treat
      the notice of appeal as a petition for a writ of mandamus seeking
      at, a minimum, an order directing the district court to place a no-
      tation on the docket that submissions were rejected. See United
      States v. Shalhoub, 855 F.3d 1255, 1262–63 (11th Cir. 2017). (“The All
      Writs Act permits us to issue a writ of mandamus to compel a dis-
      trict court to perform a particular action within its jurisdiction.”).
USCA11 Case: 24-10308      Document: 9-1      Date Filed: 03/22/2024     Page: 4 of 4

      4                       Opinion of the Court                 24-10308

       At this point, we express no opinion about whether Vient is enti-
       tled to any relief on the mandamus petition.
               To the extent that Vient sought to appeal a district court or-
       der, the appeal is DISMISSED. We further DIRECT the Clerk to
       treat the Notice of Appeal as a petition for a writ of mandamus and
       OPEN an original proceeding in this Court. Because Vient has al-
       ready paid a filing fee, we DIRECT the Clerk to collect no filing fee
       associated with the mandamus proceeding.