Doe v. Borbely

• Court: District Court, District of Columbia
• Decided: September 26, 2025
• Docket: Civil Action No. 2025-2149
• Status: Published

Opinion

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

JANE DOE,

Plaintiff, Case No. 25-cv-2149 (JMC)

v.

MARC BORBELY, et al.,

Defendants.

MEMORANDUM OPINION

Defendants removed this case from the Superior Court of the District of Columbia to this

Court on July 7, 2025. ECF 1. One week later, they filed a motion to dismiss. ECF 6. Because

Plaintiff is appearing pro se, the Court entered a Fox order directing Plaintiff to respond to that

motion by August 15, 2025. ECF 7. The Court warned Plaintiff that failure to respond could result

in the Court deeming the matter conceded. A few days after that, on July 18, the Court entered a

separate order requiring Plaintiff—who filed this case under a pseudonym—to either file a motion

to proceed under a pseudonym or to file her full name, as is generally required by the Federal Rules

of Civil Procedure. Minute Order July 18, 2025. The Court ordered Plaintiff to do one of those two

things by August 8, 2025.

Plaintiff failed to comply with either order and filed neither a response to the motion to

dismiss nor any further documents in relation to her pseudonym. So on August 20, 2025—after

both of the deadlines the Court previously set had passed—the Court entered a show cause order,

giving Plaintiff until September 3, 2025, to comply with the order regarding the pseudonym and

to show cause as to why the case should not be dismissed for failure to prosecute. ECF 9. The

1 Court mailed a copy of that show cause order to Plaintiff, but it was returned as undeliverable.

ECF 10.

To date, Plaintiff has not complied with any of the Court’s orders. In fact, the Court has

not heard from Plaintiff in any form, given that the case was removed by Defendants. That one of

the Court’s orders—but not all of them—were returned as undeliverable does not excuse Plaintiff’s

failure to respond. The local rules require pro se plaintiffs to file a “[n]otice of a change in

address . . . within 14 days of the change,” and Plaintiff has filed no such notice here. Local Civ.

R. 5.1(c)(1); see also Hatton v. Mehrotra, No. 22-cv-1587, 2022 WL 17146752, at *1 & n.1

(D.D.C. Nov. 22, 2022) (dismissing for failure to prosecute despite fact one order was returned as

undeliverable after being sent to pro se plaintiff). District courts “have inherent power to dismiss

a case sua sponte for a plaintiff’s failure to prosecute or otherwise comply with a court order.”

Angellino v. Royal Family Al-Saud, 688 F.3d 771, 775 (D.C. Cir. 2012) (citing Local Civ. R.

83.23). The Court exercises that power here, and it is therefore

ORDERED that this case is DISMISSED without prejudice for failure to prosecute.

Defendants’ motion to dismiss, ECF 6, is accordingly DENIED as moot. A separate order

accompanies this memorandum opinion.

__________________________ JIA M. COBB United States District Judge

Date: September 26, 2025