Opinion
Civil Action 22-1838
03-20-2023
MICAH ANDERSON, Plaintiff, v. DAVID N. WATSON and BRYAN L. ROBERTS, Defendants.
REPORT AND RECOMMENDATION
PATRICIA L. DODGE, UNITED STATES MAGISTRATE JUDGE
I. Recommendation
It is respectfully recommended that the Complaint be dismissed as frivolous under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(e)(2)(B)(i) and for lack of subject matter jurisdiction.
II. Report
Plaintiff Micah Anderson, a prisoner who is incarcerated at the Cook County Department of Corrections in Chicago, submitted a Complaint along with a motion for leave to proceed in forma pauperis. The Court granted Plaintiff's motion and the Complaint was docketed. Upon review of the Complaint, however, the Complaint should be dismissed because it is frivolous and also based upon lack of subject matter jurisdiction.
A. Factual Allegations
Plaintiff appears to allege that the Defendants, David Watson, the President and CEO of Comcast Cable, and Bryan Roberts, the Chairman and CEO of Comcast, took certain actions against him. Suffice it to say that the Complaint is difficult to decipher. After referencing his “satellite dish installations,” and the “memory data maintenance of my property memory data,”
Plaintiff alleges that Defendants did “not provid[e] me with the counsels and the copyright royalty judges,” and have shown “deliberate indifference and privacy violation in oath with president/CEO not providing my appointments of my library copyright royalty judges and testors [sic] as praternity having access of material of my bio physics.” Further, he claims, he was not provided with “web access to material giving me the production access to enable and access to maintenance with the station office management of my memory satellite data and my nerve system channels.” Because he was subjected to “discrimination with whereabouts of the of my transferors construction and deliberate indifference with providing me with my electrical engineer designs and development of my electrical and electronic equipment and devices as power generations, radar, and guidance systems and telephones of my memory maintenance data machine manufacture,” he claims to lack access to his “memory information data from televisions sets, radios, electrical motor, communication equipment.” (Compl. at 4-8.)
The Complaint continues in a similar manner for eight pages.
As relief, Plaintiff requests “cite expungement of all cases, need ammo, tax audits and dispatch, consortium damages, punitive damages, audio tax audits, annotated [illegible], the proc mechanical tech bioengineer, manufactured outfits and manual templates, law library ...” (Id. at 9.)
B. Standard of Review
The in forma pauperis statute provides, in relevant part, that the Court may authorize the commencement of any civil action without payment of fees when a person submits an affidavit stating that based upon his or her the assets, the person is unable to pay these fees. 28 U.S.C. § 1915(a).
Under the Prison Litigation Reform Act, Pub. L. No. 104-134, 110 Stat. 1321 (1996) (“PLRA”), courts are required to screen complaints at any time where, as is the case here, the plaintiff has been granted leave to proceed in forma pauperis. 28 U.S.C. § 1915(e)(2). The PLRA provides in relevant part that:
Notwithstanding any filing fee, or any portion thereof, that may have been paid, the court shall dismiss the case at any time if the court determines that
(A) the allegation of poverty is untrue; or
(B) the action or appeal
i. is frivolous or malicious;
ii. fails to state a claim upon which relief may be granted; or
iii. seeks monetary relief against a defendant who is immune from such relief.28 U.S.C. § 1915(e)(2). Thus, the Court must screen the Complaint to determine whether it should be dismissed.
Where the plaintiff is proceeding pro se, the complaint is “to be liberally construed,” and, “however inartfully pleaded, must be held to less stringent standards than formal pleadings drafted by lawyers.” Erickson v. Pardus, 551 U.S. 89, 93-94 (2007). Nevertheless, “pro se litigants still must allege sufficient facts in their complaints to support a claim.” Mala v. Crown Bay Marina, Inc., 704 F.3d 239, 245 (3d Cir. 2013). The Supreme Court has held that a complaint “is frivolous where it lacks an arguable basis either in law or in fact... [The] term ‘frivolous,' when applied to a complaint, embraces not only the inarguable legal conclusion, but also the fanciful factual allegation.” Neitzke v. Williams, 490 U.S. 319, 325 (1989). See Wilson v. Rackmill, 878 F.2d 772, 774 (3d Cir. 1989) (frivolous factual claims are those that describe “fantastic or delusional scenarios.”)
C. Analysis
As a review of the Complaint demonstrates, Plaintiff's allegations are incomprehensible. The factual basis of any claims he may be attempting to assert is unintelligible. Also lacking is any legal foundation for a recognizable cause of action against either of the two named defendants, and the nature of the relief sought is meaningless in context. Simply put, the Complaint lacks an arguable basis either in law or in fact, and as such, is frivolous and must be dismissed.
In addition, the Complaint must be dismissed for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(h)(3) (“If the court determines at any time that it lacks subject-matter jurisdiction, the court must dismiss the action.”)
Although Plaintiff checked a box indicating that he was filing a “Bivens action,” such claims may only be asserted against federal officers. Based on Plaintiff's allegations, both defendants are officers of Comcast; neither is a federal official. See Correctional Servs. Corp. v. Malesko, 534 U.S. 61, 66 (2001) (declining to extend Bivens to confer a right of action for damages against private entities even when they are acting under color of federal law). Nor could Plaintiff assert claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, because Defendants, both of whom are private individuals, were not acting “under color of state law.” See American Mfrs. Mut. Ins. Co. v. Sullivan, 526 U.S. 40, 50 (1999) (“the under-color-of-state-law element of § 1983 excludes from its reach merely private conduct, no matter how discriminatory or wrongful.”) Thus, subject matter jurisdiction is not based on a federal question under 28 U.S.C. § 1331.
Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Fed. Bureau of Narcotics, 403 U.S. 388 (1971).
Moreover, there are insufficient allegations in the Complaint to support jurisdiction based upon diversity of citizenship under 28 U.S.C. § 1332(a)(1), which requires citizens to be from different states and an amount in controversy that exceeds $75,000. Although Plaintiff alleges that he is incarcerated in Illinois and that Defendants work at a corporate office located in Pennsylvania, these facts, even if assumed to be true, are insufficient to establish the citizenship of any party for purposes of diversity jurisdiction. See Pierro v. Kugel, 386 Fed.Appx. 308, 309 (3d Cir. 2010) (“The modern position-and that adopted by the majority of courts of appeals to have addressed this issue-is that the domicile of a prisoner before his imprisonment presumptively remains his domicile during his imprisonment.”); McCann v. Newman Irrevocable Trust, 458 F.3d 281, 286 (3d Cir. 2006) (“Citizenship is synonymous with domicile, and the domicile of an individual is his true, fixed and permanent home and place of habitation. It is the place to which, whenever he is absent, he has the intention of returning.”) The Complaint does not allege the domicile of Plaintiff prior to his incarceration or the domicile or citizenship of Defendants. In addition, Plaintiff does not assert an amount in controversy, nor does he provide any basis for concluding that it exceeds the sum of $75,000. Thus, jurisdiction may not be based on diversity of citizenship under 28 U.S.C. § 1332(a)(1).
It is also unclear why Plaintiff filed the Complaint in the Western District of Pennsylvania when he contends that Defendants' place of employment is “7001 JFK Blvd., [Philadelphia,] ¶ 19103” (Compl. at 3), which appears to be the headquarters of Comcast.
D. Conclusion
Therefore, it is recommended that the Complaint be dismissed both because it is frivolous under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(e)(2)(B)(i) and based upon lack of subject matter jurisdiction.
If Plaintiff wishes to challenge this Report and Recommendation, he must seek review by the district judge by filing objections by April 6, 2023. Failure to file timely objections will waive the right of appeal.