A Jailhouse Lawyer's Manual Chapter 14 - Columbia Law School

B. Filing Fees
The PLRA requires indigent prisoners (unlike other litigants) who are granted in forma
pauperis (“IFP”) status in federal court to pay the filing fee in full or in installments, as they
have money in their prison accounts. You may wonder why you should bother seeking IFP
status if you are going to have to pay the filing fees anyway. The reason is that if you do not
proceed with IFP, you will have to pay the entire fee up front (before you can file the case).
Also, IFP litigants are eligible to have their summons and complaints served by the U.S.
Marshals Service 2 and to be excused from payment of some costs (though not fees) on
appeal. 3 Without IFP status, you will have to take care of service and pay appeal costs
yourself. 4
Prisoners seeking IFP status must submit certified statements 5 of their prison accounts
for the preceding six months. 6 This requires prison officials’ cooperation. However, failure to
submit the information on time is not cause for dismissal if it results from prison authorities’
inaction. 7 If prison officials fail or refuse to provide a certified statement, the court can order
them to do so. 8 District courts in various states have different procedures for acquiring the
certified statements. 9 You should obtain the necessary forms and instructions from the clerk
of the court in which you intend to bring suit. 10
libraries. They are available on the Lexis and Westlaw computer services. Citations like “1999 WL
12345” are Westlaw citations. Citations like “1999 U.S. App. LEXIS 19764” are Lexis citations. Some
jurisdictions do not allow you to cite to these decisions (use them to support your legal argument). For
additional important information about unpublished cases, see Chapter 2 of the JLM, “Introduction to
Legal Research.”
2. 28 U.S.C. § 1915(d) (2006).
3. 28 U.S.C. § 1915(c) (2006).
4. See JLM, Chapter 6, “An Introduction to Legal Documents” for information on necessary
documents.
5. 28 U.S.C. § 1915(a)(2) (2006).
6. See Spaight v. Makowski, 252 F.3d 78, 79 (2d Cir. 2001) (holding that the relevant time period
on appeal is six months before filing the notice of appeal, not six months before moving for in forma
pauperis status). As a practical matter, courts have accepted information supplied by prison officials
that was a little out of date. See Jackson v. Wright, No. 99 C 1294, U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3487, at *1 n.2
(N.D. Ill. Mar. 10, 1999) (unpublished) (accepting statement ending the month before the complaint
was filed in light of the small amounts involved); Lam v. Clark, No 99 C 558, U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1573, at
*2–3 (N.D. Ill. Feb. 10, 1999) (unpublished) (accepting account information ending three and a half
weeks before the filing of the complaint, since there is a consistent pattern for the six months covered).
7. See Lawton v. Ortiz, No. 06-1167 (FSH), 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 66905, at *2 (D.N.J. Sept. 19,
2006) (unpublished) (granting IFP status where prisoner said officials did not respond to his requests
for an account statement and other evidence showed he was indigent). In addition, delay in submitting
the financial information will not cause prisoners to miss the statute of limitations as long as the
complaint itself is submitted in time. See Garrett v. Clarke, 147 F.3d 745, 746 (8th Cir. 1998) (“For
purposes of the statute of limitations, the filing of a complaint commences a federal cause of action ... .
[T]he prisoner should be allowed to file the complaint, and then supply a prison account statement
within a reasonable time.”) (citations omitted).
8. See Stinnett v. Cook County Med. Staff, No. 99 C 1696, U.S. Dist. LEXIS 4605, at *2 (N.D. Ill.
Mar. 19, 1999) (unpublished) (requiring prison officials to send a certified copy of prisoner’s financial
statement to the court).
9. In the New York federal courts, for example, three of the four district courts (the Southern,
Eastern, and Northern Districts) obtain the certified statement directly from prison officials; prisoner
plaintiffs must submit a form to the court authorizing the disclosure of this information and the
payment of the fee from their prison accounts. In the Western District of New York, prisoners must
sign such an authorization and must also obtain, as part of their IFP application, certification from the
prison of their funds. The prison should include in the certification the average balances for the
preceding six months.
10. The addresses of the federal district courts (organized by Circuit) are provided in Appendix I
of the JLM.