Opinion
02-C-21-C.
December 21, 2004
ORDER
Plaintiff has amended his notice of appeal from the October 28, 2004 judgment to include an appeal from this court's December 7, 2004 order denying his motion for modification of the August 23, 2004 injunction. For the record, this amendment is being filed pursuant to Fed.R.App.P. 4(B)(ii) and therefore, no additional fee for filing the amended notice is required. Fed.R.App.P. 4(B)(iii).
With respect to plaintiff's original notice of appeal, this court has directed plaintiff to submit a trust fund account statement for the six-month period immediately preceding the filing of his notice of appeal so that a decision may be made whether to assess him an initial partial payment of the $255 fee for filing the appeal or whether he may proceed without an initial partial payment pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1915(b)(4). In the order of December 7, I gave plaintiff until December 27 to submit his trust fund account statement. In his amended notice of appeal, plaintiff states that he is totally indigent "as the court knows." Separately, in connection with a new lawsuit plaintiff submitted recently, plaintiff submitted a trust fund account statement reflecting transactions occurring in December only. If plaintiff intended this portion of a trust fund account statement to respond to the December 7 order, it is unacceptable. It may be that this court has a general awareness that plaintiff is relying on legal loan funds to litigate his cases in this court. However, I cannot act on this undocumented supposition of plaintiff's financial well-being and ignore the procedure Congress established in § 1915 for determining a prisoner's indigent status. Therefore, I will extend slightly the deadline within which plaintiff is to submit a trust fund account statement for the six-month period immediately preceding the filing of his notice of appeal in this case.