Unreported / Non-Citable
Background
Texas prisoner Russell Scott Adams filed a civil-rights complaint under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against Jesse Baldwin of the Kerrville Police Department. The district court dismissed the complaint for failure to state a claim under the statutory screening provisions applicable to indigent and prisoner litigation, then denied Adams’s postjudgment motions.
After the district court certified that an appeal would not be taken in good faith, Adams asked the Fifth Circuit for permission to proceed in forma pauperis on appeal. The appellate court therefore considered whether the appeal presented any nonfrivolous legal point arguable on its merits.
The Court’s Holding
The Fifth Circuit denied Adams’s motion to proceed in forma pauperis and dismissed the appeal as frivolous. The court explained that Adams primarily attempted to incorporate district-court pleadings by reference, which appellate briefing rules do not permit.
Construing his motion liberally, the court also rejected any procedural challenge to the district court’s denial of pauper status because the district court had permissibly incorporated its reasoning from the order dismissing the complaint. Adams did not challenge the district court’s substantive rulings and therefore abandoned those issues.
The Fifth Circuit further held that its frivolous-appeal dismissal counts as a strike under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(g), as does the district court’s dismissal for failure to state a claim. It warned Adams that accumulating three strikes would generally bar him from proceeding in forma pauperis in future civil actions or appeals while incarcerated unless he faces imminent danger of serious physical injury.
Key Takeaways
- An appellant may not preserve arguments by incorporating district-court pleadings by reference.
- Failure to challenge the district court’s substantive rulings on appeal constitutes abandonment of those issues.
- Both a qualifying district-court dismissal and a frivolous appellate dismissal may count as separate strikes under the prisoner-litigation three-strikes rule.
Why It Matters
The decision underscores that even pro se prisoner appellants must identify and argue specific errors in the district court’s substantive rulings. A request for appellate pauper status cannot rely on wholesale incorporation of earlier filings.
It also illustrates the cumulative consequences of unsuccessful prisoner litigation: dismissals at both the trial and appellate levels can independently contribute to the statutory three-strikes limit on future in forma pauperis filings.