Court Opinion

ID: 9930523
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-02-07 01:00:42.700968+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:19:15.275717
License: Public Domain

Case: 22-40731     Document: 00517057866        Page: 1    Date Filed: 02/06/2024

           United States Court of Appeals
                for the Fifth Circuit                                United States Court of Appeals
                                                                              Fifth Circuit

                               ____________                                 FILED
                                                                      February 6, 2024
                                 No. 22-40731                          Lyle W. Cayce
                               ____________                                 Clerk

   Larry Donnell Gibbs,

                                                          Plaintiff—Appellant,

                                      versus

   Jackson; Moton; Jared C. Oneal; John L. Ruffin; Joe
   Thomas,

                                           Defendants—Appellees.
                  ______________________________

                  Appeal from the United States District Court
                       for the Eastern District of Texas
                            USDC No. 1:21-CV-484
                  ______________________________

   Before Stewart, Clement, and Ho, Circuit Judges.
   Edith Brown Clement, Circuit Judge:
         Larry Donnell Gibbs’s pro se complaint was dismissed for failure to
   timely effect service. Because the district court abused its discretion in
   denying Gibbs leave to proceed in forma pauperis, we REVERSE and
   REMAND.
                                        I.
         Gibbs filed a pro se complaint under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against five
   officers of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Gibbs alleged that, on
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                                    No. 22-40731

   March 21, 2020, another inmate stabbed him nine times and that two of the
   defendants—whom he identified only by their last names, Jackson and
   Moton—had allowed Gibbs to bleed out for forty-five minutes before
   rendering aid. Gibbs further alleged that, in retaliation for Gibbs filing a
   grievance about the officers’ negligent response to his stabbing, three other
   officers—Jared Oneal, John Ruffin, and Joe Thomas—authorized or used
   excessive force against him on two separate instances, first in July 2020 and
   again in August 2020. Gibbs claims that these beatings caused swelling and
   bleeding in his brain which led to a seizure and resulted in post-seizure
   paralysis, confining Gibbs to a wheelchair.
          Gibbs paid the filing fee but was unable to effectuate service upon the
   defendants himself. After a months-long back-and-forth process between
   Gibbs and the district court, Gibbs filed a motion to proceed in forma
   pauperis, which would have entitled him to have service made by a United
   States marshal, see Fed. R. Civ. P. 4(c)(3), along with a copy of his inmate
   trust account statement showing a balance of $140.43. The magistrate judge
   denied his motion on three bases. First, the magistrate judge held that the
   motion to proceed in forma pauperis was moot because Gibbs had paid the
   filing fee. Second, the magistrate judge determined that, to the extent Gibbs
   was seeking in forma pauperis status for service, $140.43 was “sufficient
   funds to prosecute this action by serving the defendants.” Third, the
   magistrate judge found that granting Gibbs leave to proceed in forma
   pauperis would be futile because he had not provided the addresses of the
   defendants as required for service of process. Gibbs’s motion for
   reconsideration was denied, and his complaint was dismissed without
   prejudice. Gibbs timely appealed, and the district court granted him leave to
   proceed in forma pauperis on appeal.

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                                                II.
           We review the district court’s decision to deny Gibbs leave to proceed
   in forma pauperis for abuse of discretion, which occurs when the basis for the
   decision was arbitrary or erroneous. Flowers v. Turbine Support Div., 507 F.2d
   1242, 1244 (5th Cir. 1975). If the district court abused its discretion, we must
   reverse the dismissal for failure to serve process “unless the denial of pauper
   status neither prevented [Gibbs] from [serving the defendants] nor
   prejudiced [his] chances of [effecting service] or unless there was an adequate
   independent ground for the dismissal.” Id. at 1245.1
                                               III.
           The district court abused its discretion in denying Gibbs in forma
   pauperis status. First, the court held that “[s]ince [Gibbs] paid the filing fee
   in this action, [his] current motions to proceed in forma pauperis are moot.”
   But “a person not a pauper at the commencement of a suit may become one
   during or prior to its prosecution,” so it was error to deny Gibbs’s application
   “simply because he made an initial decision to attempt to pay his own way.”
   Flowers, 507 F.2d at 1245. Second, the court arbitrarily determined that the
   $140.43 in Gibbs’s inmate trust account was “sufficient funds” for Gibbs to
   serve the defendants. As Gibbs represented in his motion for reconsideration,

           _____________________
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             “If the applicable statute of limitations likely bars future litigation, a district
   court’s dismissal of claims under Rule 4(m) should be reviewed under the same heightened
   standard used to review a dismissal with prejudice,” i.e., dismissal “is warranted only
   where a clear record of delay or contumacious conduct by the plaintiff exists and a lesser
   sanction would not better serve the interests of justice.” Thrasher v. City of Amarillo, 709
   F.3d 509, 512–13 (5th Cir. 2013) (quotation marks and citations omitted). Because Gibbs’s
   § 1983 claims are subject to a two-year statute of limitations, see King-White v. Humble
   Indep. Sch. Dist., 803 F.3d 754, 761 (5th Cir. 2015) (citing Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem.
   Code § 16.003(a)), at least some of Gibbs’s claims would likely be time-barred. But we
   need not decide which standard applies because even under the more lenient abuse-of-
   discretion standard, the district court erred.

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   it would cost him $450 to pay for a United States marshal to effect service.
   And in any event, there is no requirement that an individual “be absolutely
   destitute” or spend “the last dollar they have” towards the payment of court
   costs to enjoy the benefit of in forma pauperis status. Adkins v. E.I. DuPont de
   Nemours & Co., 335 U.S. 331, 339 (1948). Third, the court found that granting
   Gibbs leave to proceed in forma pauperis would be futile because he had not
   “provid[ed] addresses of the defendants for service of process.” But a
   district court’s determination of whether a party may proceed in forma
   pauperis must be based solely upon economic criteria. Watson v. Ault, 525
   F.2d 886, 891 (5th Cir. 1976); see also Bell v. Children’s Protective Servs., 506
   F. App’x 327, 327–28 (5th Cir. 2013) (finding abuse of discretion where the
   district court’s denial of leave to proceed in forma pauperis rested on non-
   economic grounds).
          The decision to deny Gibbs in forma pauperis status prejudiced his
   chances of effecting service. See Flowers, 507 F.2d at 1245. Indeed, had he
   been granted leave to proceed in forma pauperis, Gibbs would have been
   “entitled to rely upon service by the U.S. Marshals.” Rochon v. Dawson, 828
   F.2d 1107, 1110 (5th Cir. 1987); see also Fed. R. Civ. P. 4(c)(3) (requiring
   a district court to “order that service be made by a United States marshal or
   deputy marshal or by a person specially appointed by the court . . . if the
   plaintiff is authorized to proceed in forma pauperis”). And Gibbs’s failure to
   provide current addresses for the defendants who were no longer employed
   by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice did not provide an “adequate
   independent ground” for dismissing his complaint. See Flowers, 507 F.2d at
   1245. To the contrary, we have regularly reversed dismissals where, as here,
   a pro se plaintiff has been unsuccessful in serving former prison officials
   “simply because [the official’s] employment status with the [prison]
   changed, and [the plaintiff] did not know how else to find [the official].”
   Ancar v. Robertson, No. 19-30524, 2022 WL 1792535, at *4 (5th Cir. June 2,

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   2022); see also Lindsey v. U.S. R.R. Ret. Bd., 101 F.3d 444, 447–48 (5th Cir.
   1996) (finding abuse of discretion despite plaintiff’s failure to “provide the
   addresses of all the parties that had to be served”); Sanchez v. Perez, No. 96-
   40049, 1996 WL 512289, at *2 & n.6 (5th Cir. Aug. 30, 1996) (reversing
   dismissal for failure to timely serve process where plaintiff had “attempted,
   in several ways, to obtain the new addresses of [the prison officials]” and
   “could get no response from the Texas Department of Corrections on the
   [officials’] current whereabouts”).
                                         IV.
          The judgment of the district court is REVERSED, and the case is
   REMANDED with instructions for the district court to permit Gibbs to
   proceed in forma pauperis in this action.

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