Frederick Pina v. State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company

Whether a state appellate court effects a deprivation of property without due process of law, in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, when it dismisses an appeal on the stated ground that the appellant failed to pay court fees, notwithstanding that the court’s own official records irrefutably demonstrate that it had previously granted the appellant’s application to proceed in forma pauperis, thereby rendering the asserted factual predicate for dismissal demonstrably false and the resulting judgment void ab initio?

Whether a state trial judge, acting under color of state law, violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments when he issues an ex parte directive— not in the form of a written order but through secret communications to court personnel—commanding the clerk's office to refuse acceptance of a litigant's application for entry of default, which application California law designates as a mandatory and ministerial filing that the clerk has no discretion to reject, thereby depriving the litigant of access to a judicial forum for the redress of grievances and extinguishing a vested property right in a cause of action?

Whether the Supremacy Clause and the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of equal protection are violated when a state court adjudicates the identical claims presented by an identical party to be ’’frivolous'’ for