United States District Court, N.D. California
ORDER OF DISMISSAL DOCKET NO. 1
EDWARD
M. CHEN UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE
Paul
Patrick Jolivette, a prisoner at the California Men's
Colony in San Luis Obispo, filed this action seeking a writ
of mandamus under 28 U.S.C. § 1651 and applied to
proceed in forma pauperis.
The
action is now before the Court for initial review pursuant to
28 U.S.C. § 1915A, which applies to prisoner actions and
requires the court to identify any cognizable claims, and
dismiss any claims which are frivolous, malicious, fail to
state a claim upon which relief may be granted, or seek
monetary relief from a defendant who is immune from such
relief. See Id. at § 1915A(b)(1), (2). Pro
se pleadings must be liberally construed. See
Balistreri v. Pacifica Police Dep't, 901 F.2d 696,
699 (9th Cir. 1990).
This is
a sovereign-citizen sort of action. Mr. Jolivette alleges in
his petition that he is “subject to the laws and rules
of the Atlan Amexem Al Moroc tribal government and availed
himself of relief in that court on May 29, 2013.”
Docket No. 1 at 2. According to Mr. Jolivette, he filed a
complaint with the Shaykamaxum Grand/Supreme Court asking
that court to discharge him from state custody and any other
and all obligations imposed upon him by the California
Superior Court and the Respondent, ” and that court
entered a default judgment in Mr. Jolivette's favor in
2013. Id. Mr. Jolivette petitions this court to
“direct the respondent to specifically perform the
judgment of the Tribal Court” of Shaykamaxum,
[1]
which would include his release from prison. Id. at
3.
Mr.
Jolivette has been peddling some variant of his theory that
he must be released pursuant to a judgment of the Shaykamaxum
Grand/Supreme Court for several years. He has tried without
success to have the Shaykamaxum “judgment” and
“default judgment” registered as judgments of a
sister state in several district courts. See Jolivette v.
People of the State of California, N.D. Cal. 14-mc-80001
RS at Docket No. 9 (Feb. 11, 2015, order describing
procedural history and stating that an “appeal, like
the attempt to register the purported ‘judgment,'
is frivolous”); Jolivette v. People of the State of
California, E. D. Cal. No. 2:13-cv-1882 LKK DAD PS
(dismissed for lack of subject matter jurisdiction when
petitioner was unable to show that the Shaykamaxum
Grand/Supreme Court was real and had issued an enforceable
judgment); Jolivette v. Acosta, D. Nev. No.
2:14-cv-130 JCM-GWF at Docket No. 5 (Jan. 28, 2014, order
rejecting plaintiff's request for a writ of execution
because the district court could not determine the identity
of the court that supposedly issued the judgment sought to be
enforced where the judgment was from “an
‘adjudicator' near the zip code
‘95829'” and one document “bears a
signature from an officer of ‘the unincorporated United
States of America'”); and id. at Docket
No. 6 (striking the registration of foreign judgment filed by
petitioner as erroneously filed). Cf. Thomas v.
California Department of Corr. and Rehab., 2018 WL
3129811 (June 20, 2018) (rejecting case filed by another
inmate attempting to register purported foreign judgments on
Jolivette's behalf).
Mr.
Jolivette also has filed various actions purporting to
enforce his right to be released pursuant to the Shaykamaxum
Grand/Supreme Court “judgment.” Most importantly,
Mr. Jolivette filed a petition for writ of mandamus in the
Eastern District of California, see Jolivette v. Superior
Court of Solano Co., E. D. Cal. No. 2:19-cv-540-TLN-EFB
(“Jolivette v. Superior Court”), that
was substantially identical to the present petition for writ
of mandamus. Indeed, many of the pages in the present
petition appear to be photocopies of pages from the petition
filed in the Eastern District, with only the signature dates
changed. Compare Docket No. 1 at 2, 3, 4 and 6-17 in
the present action with Docket No. 1 at 2, 3, 4 and
6-17 in Jolivette v. Superior Court. The Eastern
District action was filed on March 27, 2019, and dismissed on
October 1, 2019.[2]
The
petition in this action is frivolous because it is
duplicative of the petition filed in Jolivette v.
Superior Court. See Cato v. United States, 70
F.3d 1103, 1105 n.2 (9th Cir. 1995); Bailey v.
Johnson, 846 F.2d 1019, 1021 (5th Cir. 1988)
(duplicative or repetitious litigation of virtually identical
causes of action is subject to dismissal under 28 U.S.C.
§ 1915 as malicious); see also Adams v. California
Dept. of Health Services, 487 F.3d 684, 689 (9th Cir.
2007) (“Plaintiffs generally have ‘no right to
maintain two separate actions involving the same subject
matter at the same time in the same court and against the
same defendant.'”) The petition for writ of
mandamus in this action repeats claims made in Jolivette
v. Superior Court. Although the petitions have different
governmental entities as the named respondents, both
petitions espouse the same legal theories and both seek to
enforce the same default judgment purportedly entered in
August 2013 by the Shaykamaxum Grand/Supreme Court.
Accordingly,
this action is DISMISSED with prejudice
because it is frivolous. The Clerk shall close the file.
IT
IS SO ORDERED.
---------
Notes:
[1] Courts have been skeptical that the
tribal government of Atlan Amexem Al Moroc and the
Shaykamaxum Grand/Supreme Court are genuine legal entities.
See, e.g., Jolivette v. Superior Court, 2013 WL
6331356, *1 (E. D. Cal. Dec. 5, 2013) (rejecting request to
register judgment purportedly issued from Shaykamaxum
Grand/Supreme Court and observing that “there is no
indication that such a government exists or is recognized by
the United States”).
Neither Atlan Amexem Al Moroc nor Shaykamaxum are
included on the list of the Indian tribal entities recognized
and eligible to receive services from the United States
Bureau of Indian Affairs - not today and not in 2013 when the
judgment purportedly was entered. See 84 Fed. Reg.
1200 (Feb. 1, 2019) (2019 list); 78 Fed. Reg. 26384 (May 6,
2013) (2013 list). And neither of those entities are included
on the U.S. State Department's list of independent
states, available at
https://www.state.gov/independent-states-in-the-world.
Lastly, neither of those entities turns up in an inquiry into
the archives of the Office of the Historian at the U.S. State
Department, available at
https://history.state.gov/search.
[2] Mr. Jolivette more recently filed a
petition for writ of habeas corpus in the Eastern District. A
magistrate judge has recommended that it be dismissed for
lack of jurisdiction because, even if the Shaykamaxum court
is a legitimate tribal court, tribal courts have no
jurisdiction “to construe, alter or overrule, a state
criminal conviction or sentence” cannot “obtain
jurisdiction over a state merely by serving process on its
official representative, ” and the petition did not
allege that petitioner was in custody in violation of the
Constitution or laws or treaties of the United States.
Jolivette v. Gastello, E. D. Cal. No. 2:19-cv-2173
KJM AC P at Docket No. 7 (order filed ...