Case research · C060

Tufano v. USDA et al

3:25-cv-01990 · U.S. District Court, Middle District of Pennsylvania

ClosedDismissed without prejudice (voluntary dismissal under FRCP 41)Pennsylvania
CourtU.S. District Court, Middle District of Pennsylvania
FiledOctober 21, 2025
StatusClosed
OutcomeDismissed without prejudice (voluntary dismissal under FRCP 41)
Final dispositionWithout prejudice
JurisdictionPennsylvania
Pro se
Current / transferee court
Transferred case
Last researchedAugust 25, 2026

About this case

Evidentiary treatment: This summarizes the plaintiff's own allegations as stated in the complaint or docket record cited below. It reflects what was filed, not a court finding, and is not a determination that the allegations are true.

Plaintiff sued the USDA, filing his complaint with an in forma pauperis application on October 21, 2025. The docket classifies the cause of action as a civil rights claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. A court screening order identified pleading deficiencies, and Tufano ultimately withdrew the action, stating a new complaint with additional claims had been filed raising “the identical claims” as a separate, later-filed action (tracked separately as C073). The specific factual allegations and relief originally sought are not detailed in the materials reviewed.

Complaint / docket source — govinfo.gov ↗

Defendants

Source record

This page separates court/ruling records, party filings, research classifications, secondary sources and public statements. Unknown or unresolved fields remain labelled as such.

Outcome and research status

Outcome reason: Magistrate Judge Leo A. Latella's May 14, 2026 Report & Recommendation construed Tufano's May 4, 2026 response to a pleading-deficiency order -- stating a new complaint with additional claims had been filed and “this complaint may be dismissed” -- as a motion for voluntary dismissal under Fed. R. Civ. P. 41, and recommended it be granted. The district court adopted the R&R on June 18, 2026, dismissing the complaint without prejudice and closing the case. Update 2026-08-25: The report and recommendation (Doc. 7, May 14, 2026) and the closing order (Doc. 8, June 18, 2026) were both read in full; the order adopts the recommendation in its entirety, dismisses the complaint without prejudice and directs the Clerk to close the case. CourtListener's null termination date for this docket is stale. A footnote to the recommendation, already recorded here and now confirmed against the document text, identifies the successor filing: "On April 20, 2026, Plaintiff filed a Complaint in Tufano v. USDA, 3:26-CV-01018, raising the identical claims brought in this action. Plaintiff paid the full filing. He filed an Amended Complaint in that action on April 28, 2026." That docket is C073. The dismissal here was therefore the abandonment of a fee-waived action in favour of a paid duplicate filed while the first was still pending.

Research status: Source-backed (report and recommendation and closing order both read in full via GovInfo)

Research notes: 2026-08-22: Resolves the standing contradiction between the existing ‘Tufano voluntarily withdrew’ claims-summary framing and the 2026-08-15 pass's docket-only read of a judicially-ordered dismissal -- the R&R itself (read directly, govinfo.gov) shows both are accurate: the magistrate construed Tufano's own response as an FRCP 41 voluntary-dismissal motion and recommended granting it. The R&R's footnote 1 also directly confirms the companion action is 3:26-cv-01018 (C073), which it describes as “raising the identical claims brought in this action.”

Related litigation

Court & ruling records

Findings recorded only where they are tied to an order, opinion or report and recommendation.

All 73 records →

Record labels distinguish final orders/opinions, reports and recommendations, non-final orders, and tentative/indexed ruling records.

Construed motion for voluntary dismissal, granted (R&R)
Report & recommendationMay 14, 2026

R&R construed Tufano's May 4, 2026 response -- stating a new complaint with additional claims had been filed and “this complaint may be dismissed” -- as a motion for voluntary dismissal under Fed. R. Civ. P. 41 and recommended it be granted, dismissing the action without prejudice. Footnote 1 confirms the companion action is 3:26-cv-01018 (C073), “raising the identical claims brought in this action.” The district court adopted the R&R on June 18, 2026, closing the case.

May 14, 2026 ruling source — govinfo.gov ↗

Chronology events

Sequence does not by itself prove motive or causation.

New complaint filed (second federal action)

Tufano filed a second federal complaint, C060, against USDA and Weiwei Lu.

USDA repeated-litigation chronology · Federal docketSource — courtlistener.com ↗
New complaint filed (companion action)

Tufano filed C073 against the USDA. C073's own docket remains unreachable to every independently attempted source (PacerMonitor 429 on direct fetch and 403 in a live browser; Justia unresolved bot-challenge; CourtListener/RECAP holds only a docket shell with zero entries; Trellis and DocketBird 403; UniCourt 404), so its current status is still unverified. What is court-sourced, from the C060 R&R read directly: C073 was filed 2026-04-20 raising the identical claims brought in C060, the full filing fee was paid rather than proceeding in forma pauperis, and an Amended Complaint was filed at Doc. 4 on 2026-04-28. Its assigned judge is Magistrate Judge Leo A. Latella.

USDA repeated-litigation chronology · Federal docketSource — courtlistener.com ↗
Amended complaint filed (companion action)

Eight days after filing C073, Tufano filed an Amended Complaint in that action at Doc. 4. This is recorded in footnote 1 of the C060 Report and Recommendation, which also states that C073 raises the identical claims brought in C060 and that Tufano paid the full filing fee there rather than proceeding in forma pauperis.

USDA repeated-litigation chronology · Court orderSource — govinfo.gov ↗
Case dismissed; companion action judicially identified

The district court adopted Magistrate Judge Latella's R&R and dismissed C060 without prejudice as a construed voluntary dismissal under FRCP 41. The R&R's own footnote 1 identifies the companion action as 3:26-cv-01018 (C073), describing it as "raising the identical claims brought in this action."

USDA repeated-litigation chronology · Final court orderSource — govinfo.gov ↗

Public video statements

Public statements are displayed separately from court findings. Quotations are transcribed from the video’s own YouTube auto-generated captions and timestamped from the caption cues covering the passage quoted. The Strong / Moderate / Context tier is this project’s research classification of how closely a statement bears on the documented filing patterns — it is not a judicial finding. Any second badge names the filing-restriction factor the statement’s own words describe; it records what the speaker said, not that a court found it.

How quotations are marked: An ellipsis (…) inside a quotation marks words left out between two passages of the same video, which can sit some minutes apart. The omitted wording is not reproduced here, and a clip on the statement supercut plays the whole span from the quotation’s first word to its last — so it includes the omitted material. Quotations without an ellipsis are continuous speech.

Repeated/escalatory filing
Strong pattern relevanceRepeat filing on the same disputeThreatened or prospective filing00:34

Corrupt USDA wants SNAP EBT Users SICK AND POISONED · July 11, 2025

I'm completely disgusted with the USDA at this point. I've already filed a lawsuit against them for this matter. They have inspected my store. They've seen that I have product that I'm open to the public, that I have products available for sale, and they come up with any there's no reason for them to deny my application at this point. How many more lawsuits am I going to have to file? This is completely ridiculous.

The rubric for a Strong classification is satisfied on the face of the words — both halves the test requires are present. (1) A tracked dispute is named: he names the USDA on camera, and the dataset already groups the USDA filings as "USDA-related litigation" precisely because they repeat. (2) Core filing conduct is described: he states in one breath that he has already filed on this matter ("I've already filed a lawsuit against them for this matter") and that more filings on the same matter are in prospect ("How many more lawsuits am I going to have to file?"). That is repeat filing on the same dispute as the published vocabulary defines it — filing again on a grievance already litigated — with the forward-looking half recorded as a threatened or prospective filing.

Transcript-verified verbatim quote

Watch at 00:34 — youtube.com ↗
Dispute background statement
Moderate pattern relevance00:00

Corrupt USDA wants SNAP EBT Users SICK AND POISONED · July 11, 2025

I'm a small business owner that has been applying to accept SNAP EBT food benefits at my store for over two years now and there's been over six or seven applications and they continue to discriminate against my small business and refuse to allow me to accept this as a form of payment

Establishes the grievance behind the whole USDA litigation line and dates its origin — "over two years" of applications by July 2025 puts the first application in roughly mid-2023, which predates every tracked USDA case (the earliest is C049, filed 2025-02-12). The "six or seven applications" count is of administrative applications to the agency, not lawsuits — Self-reported filing volume was considered and rejected for exactly that reason; that factor covers his own count of suits filed. No filing conduct is described in this sentence.

Transcript-verified verbatim quote

Watch / source — youtube.com ↗
Dispute background statement
Moderate pattern relevance00:35

USDA GANGSTALKING · July 11, 2025

Even if it's something like denying me SNAP EBT benefits because there is no way they would conduct two inspections on my store before even approving the benefits.

The substance of the USDA-related dispute in one sentence — a denial of SNAP/EBT retailer authorisation and two pre-approval store inspections — spoken while C010 (Tufano v. USDA, Lackawanna County 2025-03930, filed 2025-05-27, defendants USDA and Weiwei Lu) was pending and 45 days after it was filed. The recorded litigation timeline notes that C010 was filed roughly two months after C049 was dismissed on procedural grounds (C049 dismissed without prejudice 2025-03-25), and C060 followed on 2025-10-21, with C073 (2026-04-20) described in C060's own Report and Recommendation as "raising the identical claims brought in this action." No case, court, filing or lawyer is named here — he describes the underlying grievance only.

Transcript-verified verbatim quote

Watch at 00:35 — youtube.com ↗
Dispute background statement
Moderate pattern relevance00:00

OUR GOVERNMENT USDA HATES Small Business · July 13, 2025

So, the reason the USDA claims they denied my SNAP EBT application is because I am being considered as an online retailer, yet this whole list of retailers in the state of Pennsylvania has been approved for online retail before me.

This is the subject matter of the USDA litigation stated in his own words, and the dataset does not currently hold it: the case tracker records four USDA actions (C010, C049, C060, C073) but none of them says what the underlying grievance is, and the terms SNAP and EBT appear nowhere else in the dataset. If further claims research confirms that the USDA cases concern SNAP/EBT retailer authorisation, this quote is the public statement of it.

Transcript-verified verbatim quote

Watch / source — youtube.com ↗
Repeated/escalatory filing
Moderate pattern relevanceRepeat filing on the same disputeThreatened or prospective filingJudicial or forum bias alleged00:30

OUR GOVERNMENT USDA HATES Small Business · July 13, 2025

what's going to happen when I file a lawsuit against the USDA for further discrimination? And even if I name all of these companies in the lawsuit, the judge is just going to dismiss it because they do not allow legitimate small business owners to do business in the United States of America.

Three things in one sentence. He announces a further action against a tracked defendant ("further discrimination" presupposes a prior grievance already pursued); he contemplates adding five new defendants to it who have no connection to him beyond being approved when he was not; and he states in advance that the court will dismiss it because the system is closed to people like him. The prediction is not about this judge or this case — it is a general statement that the forum will not hear him, which is what Judicial or forum bias alleged records. Held at Moderate rather than Strong: the core factor is present, but the "same dispute" element rests on the word further and on the shared defendant, because the dataset does not record what C010/C049/C060/C073 actually plead. It would qualify as Strong if a claims pass confirms those cases concern this same SNAP/EBT retailer authorisation. A tier and a factor record what the speaker said; neither is a court finding.

Transcript-verified verbatim quote

Watch at 00:30 — youtube.com ↗
Dispute background statement
Moderate pattern relevance00:44

Raw Beef Jerky · September 7, 2025

probably going to have to advertise this as pet food and label it not for sale uh due to USDA FDA regulations, but it will be available on frankies.com.

The USDA is a tracked defendant — the named party in C010 (Tufano v. USDA, filed 2025-05-27, pending at the time of publication), C049 (closed), C060 and C073, the USDA-related dispute grouping. This is a dated, first-person statement of the regulatory grievance underlying that grouping: that federal labelling rules force him to market a food product as pet food. He describes no filing, threatens none, and names no case, court or docket — the connection is the party and the subject matter only. Tier: Moderate (No filing-conduct factor)

Transcript-verified verbatim quote

Watch at 00:44 — youtube.com ↗
Legal escalation / contemplated proceeding
Moderate pattern relevanceThreatened or prospective filing00:00

Manlets vs The US Government · August 14, 2026

We are going to sue the United States government for making us short through the poisoning of the food supply and inadequate dietary guidelines.

Announces a filing not yet made against a defendant already in the dataset, on the same subject matter as the tracked dietary-guidelines actions. The video names no case, court, docket or agency.

Why this classification: His own words describe a future action, so this records a prospective filing and not repeat filing; the repetition visible in the dataset is not something he says, and reading it into his words would import a research conclusion into his mouth. The comedic register of the surrounding video is left unresolved.

Transcript-verified verbatim quote

Watch / source — youtube.com ↗
Legal escalation / contemplated proceeding
Moderate pattern relevanceThreatened or prospective filing00:28

Manlets vs The US Government · August 14, 2026

There are far more short guys than the tall guys or whoever is in control of society. So yeah, I think I think this is the first step. Manits versus the United States of America or it could be all men under 510 versus the United States of America.

Proposes a caption for the announced action and a class of plaintiffs. His description of it as the first step is the phrase most in tension with the existing docket.

Why this classification: Prospective rather than repeat filing on the speaker's own account, since he describes a first step and never says he has sued on this subject before. The plaintiff class he proposes is part of the video's comedic framing, which this pass leaves unresolved.

Transcript-verified verbatim quote

Watch at 00:28 — youtube.com ↗
Legal escalation / contemplated proceeding
Moderate pattern relevanceThreatened or prospective filing00:50

Manlets vs The US Government · August 14, 2026

So I don't know. I guess it's it's a first step, right? Unironically factually it would be a factually correct lawsuit.

The line that decides how the whole video reads: the speaker uses the word unironically himself while calling the proposed action factually correct.

Why this classification: Quoted separately because it is the only point at which the speaker addresses whether he means the announcement seriously. The register remains unresolved and the classification records a prospective filing, not one made.

Transcript-verified verbatim quote

Watch at 00:50 — youtube.com ↗

Related video research

Each video has its own research page with its verified publish date, timestamped statements and case links. A researched link between a video and a docket record is not a finding of causation in either direction.

Cite this page
Frank Tufano Litigation Research. "Tufano v. USDA et al (3:25-cv-01990)". Research last verified August 25, 2026. https://suedbyfranktufano.com/cases/3-25-cv-01990-tufano-v-usda-et-al/