Benjamin Vient v. Highlands News-Sun

[DO NOT PUBLISH]
In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Eleventh Circuit
____________________
No. 24-10308
Non-Argument Calendar
____________________
BENJAMIN VIENT,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
versus
HIGHLANDS NEWS-SUN,
Defendant-Appellee,
TIM SMOLARICK, et al.,
Defendants.
____________________
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2 Opinion of the Court 24-10308
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Southern District of Florida
D.C. Docket No. 2:19-cv-14012-RLR
____________________
Before WILSON , J ILL PRYOR , and G RANT, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
Appellant Benjamin Vient, proceeding pro se, previously
sued Highlands News-Sun, bringing copyright infringement
claims. The district court granted summary judgment to High-
lands. Over a several month period after the district court granted
summary judgment, Vient moved for reconsideration five times.
Each time, the district court denied the motion. On June 1, 2022,
when the district court denied the fifth motion for reconsideration,
it instructed the clerk to refuse to accept “all future filings from
[Vient] with the sole exception of a notice of appeal.”
On January 30, 2024, Vient filed a notice of appeal in the dis-
trict court. According to the notice, Vient submitted to the district
court filings titled “Motion to Correct the Court Record and Proper
Adjudication of the Corrected Motion” and “Notice for Records
and Testimony Request Under § 810 of the Federal Judiciary regu-
lations,” and on December 11, 2023, the district court returned the
submissions to Vient without adding any entry to the docket in his
case to reflect that documents had been submitted or rejected. In
the notice of appeal, Vient stated that he was seeking review of the
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24-10308 Opinion of the Court 3
district court’s “action and response” related to his filings. Vient
paid a filing fee for the appeal.
To the extent that Vient has appealed the district court’s or-
der imposing a filing injunction or the recent rejection of his sub-
missions, we lack appellate jurisdiction. The district court entered
the filing injunction on June 1, 2022. Vient’s notice of appeal, which
was filed in January 2024, is untimely to appeal that order. See Green
v. Drug Enf’t Admin., 606 F.3d 1296, 1300 (11th Cir. 2010); Fed. R.
App. P. 4(a)(1)(A). It is possible that Vient sought to appeal the dis-
trict court’s recent rejection of his submissions. But because the dis-
trict court’s apparent decision to reject his submissions appears no-
where on the district court’s docket, we have no district court de-
cision to review and thus lack jurisdiction on appeal. See 28 U.S.C.
§ 1291.
We liberally construe pro se filings. See Timson v. Sampson,
518 F.3d 870, 874 (11th Cir. 2008). Here, we construe Vient’s notice
of appeal as seeking to challenge the district court’s failure to place
any notation on the docket reflecting that he sought to file docu-
ments and that the filings were rejected. The proper vehicle for
making such a challenge is a petition for mandamus. We thus treat
the notice of appeal as a petition for a writ of mandamus seeking
at, a minimum, an order directing the district court to place a no-
tation on the docket that submissions were rejected. See United
States v. Shalhoub, 855 F.3d 1255, 1262–63 (11th Cir. 2017). (“The All
Writs Act permits us to issue a writ of mandamus to compel a dis-
trict court to perform a particular action within its jurisdiction.”).
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4 Opinion of the Court 24-10308
At this point, we express no opinion about whether Vient is enti-
tled to any relief on the mandamus petition.
To the extent that Vient sought to appeal a district court or-
der, the appeal is DISMISSED. We further DIRECT the Clerk to
treat the Notice of Appeal as a petition for a writ of mandamus and
OPEN an original proceeding in this Court. Because Vient has al-
ready paid a filing fee, we DIRECT the Clerk to collect no filing fee
associated with the mandamus proceeding.
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