What is the batting average on sovereign citizen cases? I mean, even a blind squirrel finds a nut every now and then, but it seems like the squirrel has better luck than anyone trying sovereign citizen arguments. A District Cout judge in Minnesota has dismissed a Fair Debt Collection Practices Act lawsuit after a plaintiff demanded $150,000 because the plaintiff did not provide an adequate accounting of his finances in order to avoid paying the filing fees.
The background: The plaintiff filed an FDCPA and due process lawsuit seeking to halt collection efforts, undo a state court judgment, force a detailed accounting of an alleged debt, and recover compensatory and punitive damages.
- Instead of paying the filing fee, the plaintiff applied to proceed in forma pauperis. The problem was not subtle. His application claimed he earned no income during the past year. Yet his own complaint alleged that his wages were being garnished. The court also noted that he denied filing any prior IFP applications, even though he had filed another just weeks earlier.
- A Magistrate Judge gave the plaintiff two weeks to fix these discrepancies and submit “an amended and truthful IFP application.” What arrived instead was a nearly identical form, again reporting no income and again omitting prior filings.
- In response, the plaintiff argued that the income described in his complaint belonged to a “legal fiction” associated with his name, while he himself was a “living man.” The court recognized this as a familiar sovereign citizen position and reminded the plaintiff that such theories are routinely rejected as “frivolous and nonsensical.”
The ruling: Judge John R. Tunheim of the District Court for the District of Minnesota adopted the Magistrate Judge’s recommendation, concluding that the plaintiff “failed to submit a truthful and accurate amended IFP application” and therefore failed to comply with the court’s order. Judge Tunheim also emphasized that the plaintiff could not simultaneously claim to be a natural person eligible for IFP status while arguing that only a separate “estate” was receiving income. “He cannot have it both ways,” the judge wrote.
- The court dismissed the action without prejudice for failure to prosecute, adding a caution that the lawsuit “as presently stated appears to be frivolous.”
