In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
No. 10-2353
C OREY A. T AYLOR,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
v.
JAMES B. W ATKINS, et al.,
Defendants-Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Southern District of Illinois.
No. 10-4-GPM—G. Patrick Murphy, Judge.
S UBMITTED A UGUST 11, 2010—D ECIDED O CTOBER 14, 2010
Before K ANNE, W OOD , and H AMILTON, Circuit Judges.
H AMILTON, Circuit Judge. Corey A. Taylor, an Illinois
prisoner, filed suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against
several officers and employees of the Illinois Depart-
ment of Corrections, alleging that they violated his civil
rights by contaminating his food, tampering with his
mail, depriving him of sleep, and assaulting him. He
then requested leave to proceed in forma pauperis (“IFP”),
so that he would not be required to pay the filing fee for
2 No. 10-2353
a civil action. But Taylor has previously incurred three
“strikes,” meaning that at least three actions he has
brought as an inmate seeking redress from a govern-
mental entity or an officer or employee of a governmental
entity have been dismissed as frivolous or malicious, or
for failing to state a claim on which relief may be
granted. See 28 U.S.C. § 1915A. Taylor therefore could
not proceed IFP in federal court on a civil action unless
he was in “imminent danger of serious physical injury.”
28 U.S.C. § 1915(g).
Taylor asserted that he was in imminent danger be-
cause the defendant officers who allegedly assaulted
him continued to work in his housing unit. The defen-
dants then challenged Taylor’s assertions. Following an
evidentiary hearing, the district court concluded that
Taylor had not shown that he was in imminent danger
and denied the request to proceed IFP. After Taylor
failed to pay the necessary filing fee, the district court
dismissed the case.
Taylor appeals and now asks for leave to proceed IFP
in this court. He maintains that the district court should
have restricted its imminent-danger inquiry to his allega-
tions, and that the court erred by holding a hearing after
the defendants contested those allegations. We disagree,
and so we join the district court in denying Taylor’s
request to proceed IFP on appeal.
The district court, relying on Gibbs v. Roman, 116 F.3d
83 (3d Cir. 1997), overruled on other grounds, Abdul-Akbar
v. McKelvie, 239 F.3d 307 (3d Cir. 2001) (en banc), drew a
distinction between unchallenged and challenged allega-
No. 10-2353 3
tions of imminent danger. Unchallenged allegations
must be accepted as true, the district court concluded, but
challenged allegations must be examined to determine
whether they are credible. In Gibbs the Third Circuit
held that a complaint alleging imminent danger “must
be credited as having satisfied the threshold criterion of
§ 1915(g) unless the ‘imminent danger’ element is chal-
lenged.” 116 F.3d at 86. If a defendant contests a plain-
tiff’s imminent-danger allegations, Gibbs explained, the
court must determine the allegations’ credibility, either
by relying on affidavits or depositions or by holding a
hearing. Id. at 86-87. Here the defendants challenged
Taylor’s allegations. The district court followed Gibbs,
held a hearing, and found that Taylor’s allegations of
imminent danger were not supported by evidence.
Taylor argues that the district court’s decision to
conduct a hearing runs contrary to the teaching of
Ciarpaglini v. Saini, 352 F.3d 328 (7th Cir. 2003). Contrary
to Taylor’s contention, Ciarpaglini did not decide that a
district court may never look beyond the allegations in
a complaint to determine whether a three-strikes plain-
tiff has met section 1915(g)’s imminent-danger excep-
tion. In Ciarpaglini we explained that a court evaluating
an IFP request “must review a frequent filer’s well-
pled allegations to ensure that the prisoner is not in
imminent danger,” and we warned that section 1915(g)
“is not a vehicle for determining the merits of a claim.” Id.
at 330-31. But in that case the defendants did not deny
the plaintiff’s allegations that prison doctors had discon-
tinued a particular course of psychiatric treatment.
Instead, the defendants argued that the allegations were
4 No. 10-2353
not sufficiently serious to meet the imminent-danger
exception, and the district court had agreed. Id. at 331.
We rejected the argument that section 1915(g) requires
an inquiry into the seriousness of imminent-danger
allegations, observing that such a requirement “would
result in a complicated set of rules about what condi-
tions are serious enough, all for a simple statutory pro-
vision governing when a prisoner must pay the filing
fee for his claim.” Id.
Under Ciarpaglini, a court considering a motion to
proceed IFP should not attempt to evaluate the serious-
ness of a plaintiff’s claims. But it has never been the
rule that courts must blindly accept a prisoner’s allega-
tions of imminent danger. Courts routinely deny IFP
requests where the imminent-danger allegations are
“conclusory or ridiculous,” or where they concern only
past injuries. Id. at 330-31. In the same vein, we agree
with the district court in this case and the Third Circuit
in Gibbs that when a defendant contests a plaintiff’s
claims of imminent danger, a court must act to resolve
the conflict. A contrary conclusion would mean that a
three-strikes plaintiff could proceed IFP whenever his
allegations of imminent danger were facially plausible,
even if the defendant had incontrovertible proof that
rebutted those allegations. Such a rule would allow easy
evasion of the three-strikes rule. We also agree that a
hearing is one proper way to resolve the issue, though
we caution courts to be conscious of such a hearing’s
proper scope. As a general rule, we would expect that
an IFP determination should not evolve into a full-scale
merits review, though in many cases, including this one,
No. 10-2353 5
the allegations of imminent danger are linked to the
allegations underlying the suit.
Taylor’s request to proceed IFP on appeal is D ENIED.
He shall pay the required docketing fee within 14 days,
or else this appeal will be dismissed for failure to
prosecute pursuant to Circuit Rule 3(b). See Nelwin v.
Helman, 123 F.3d 429, 434 (7th Cir. 1997).
10-14-10