Unreported / Non-Citable
Background
Mahmood Nazir Khan brought a civil action against U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California. The dismissal order does not describe the claims Khan asserted or the relief he sought. It also contains no ruling on the merits, so it says nothing about whether the underlying claims had substance.
On April 4, 2024, the court issued an order directing Khan to show cause why the case should not be dismissed for lack of prosecution (Doc. No. 4). According to the October 2026 order, Khan did not respond, and the deadline to respond has passed. The court also noted that he had not otherwise communicated with it. From that silence, the court concluded that it appeared Khan no longer wished to prosecute the action and had abandoned the litigation. That conclusion was an inference from his inaction, not a finding based on any statement from him.
District Judge Dena Coggins signed the dismissal order on October 13, 2026, and it was filed the next day. The caption refers to the plaintiff in the plural, but only one plaintiff is named.
The Court’s Holding
The court dismissed the action without prejudice because of Khan's failure to respond to the April 4, 2024 order to show cause, his failure to prosecute, and his failure to obey a court order. It directed the Clerk to close the case. The order does not cite Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 41(b) or any other specific source of authority for the dismissal. It rests on the Ninth Circuit's multi-factor test for dismissal due to lack of prosecution.
The court listed the five factors from Pagtalunan v. Galaza, 291 F.3d 639, 642 (9th Cir. 2002), and Hernandez v. City of El Monte, 138 F.3d 393, 398 (9th Cir. 1998). They are the public interest in expeditious resolution of litigation, the court's need to manage its docket, the risk of prejudice to the defendant, the public policy favoring disposition on the merits, and the availability of less drastic sanctions. The court found that the first three supported dismissal. It stated these conclusions briefly and made no detailed findings about any specific prejudice to the agency.
Only the policy favoring disposition on the merits counseled against dismissal. The court reasoned that Khan's failure to prosecute made a merits disposition impossible. On the last factor, the court said it had considered alternative measures and concluded that issuing yet another order to show cause would be futile. Because the dismissal is without prejudice, the order does not by its terms bar Khan from pursuing his claims in a later proceeding. It does not address limitations, refiling, or any motion to reopen.
Key Takeaways
- A plaintiff who ignores a court's order to show cause why a case should not be dismissed for lack of prosecution risks losing the entire action.
- The court applied the five-factor Ninth Circuit test and treated the policy favoring merits decisions as outweighed because the plaintiff's abandonment made a merits ruling impossible.
- The court found that a further order to show cause would be futile, so it dismissed the case rather than imposing a lesser sanction first.
- The dismissal is expressly without prejudice, and the order resolves no merits question and makes no findings about the claims against the agency.
- Litigants who cannot proceed should communicate with the court before a response deadline passes, because this court treated the absence of any communication as a sign of abandonment.
Why It Matters
This is a routine docket-management order from a single district judge. It is not a reported opinion, and it carries little precedential weight. It applies settled Ninth Circuit standards and announces no new law. Its value is as a short illustration of how the five-factor analysis is applied when a party stops responding altogether.
For litigants, the order is a reminder that silence after an order to show cause can end a case. A court may regard another warning as pointless once a party has stopped communicating. The order leaves several things open. It does not say what the underlying dispute concerned, whether Khan had any explanation for his silence, or whether he could file anything further. It is dated about two and a half years after the show-cause order and does not explain that interval.