Skip to main content

Don't Ignore Lawsuit Documents

When you are sued, the lawsuit documents are called a summons and a complaint. When you are served with a summons and complaint, you can either move to dismiss the complaint, or you have to serve an "answer" within 20 or 30 days of being served.

If you don't make a motion or serve an answer, a "default judgment" will be entered against you, which can mean that whatever relief the complaint was asking for, the plaintiff will get. This happens a lot in debt collector lawsuits. Debtors get sued, ignore the lawsuit documents, then wake up one day to find that their bank account has been frozen because the debt collector served a restraining notice on the debtor's bank.

Default judgments are often vacated because cases should proceed on their "merits". But in a recent case an appeals court refused to vacate a default for a pro se (she had no lawyer) plaintiff. The plaintiff was served by "leave and mail" service where the papers were left at the door of the plaintiff's home and were also mailed. The appeals court held that this was proper service and that the plaintiff had no reasonable excuse why she had not served an answer. She also tried to submit new evidence on a reply in her motion to vacate, which was not proper.

Two lessons from this case: (1) Don't ignore a lawsuit against you thinking nothing will happen; and (2) When you are sued, you need to hire a litigation lawyer because a good lawyer may have found a wrinkle to get the default vacated.

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Being Fired for Things an Employee Did On Their Own Time, Outside of Work: Legal or Not?

New York is an "at will" employment state, meaning that, in the absence of a contract, you can be fired at any time, for any reason, or for no reason at all, unless the reason is based on something like age, race, religion, disability, etc. (just a handful of categories). (Government employees have more protections than private-sector employees, such as First Amendment protections.) One of the few exceptions to the at-will employment rule is New York Labor Law §201-d. The statute is lengthy and has lots of caveats and qualifiers and defenses (for the employer). But the gist of § 201-d is that an employee can't be disciplined or fired (or not hired) for something they do on their own time, away from work, that is legal, and that is not against the employer's interests.  The statute and the reported cases mostly deal with "recreational" and "political" activities, and the cases can turn on whether something was a "recreational activity...
Post a Comment
Read more

Insurance Companies Trying to Gag Superstorm Sandy Victims?

As reported in several news articles ( this one  is free), in the aftermath of superstorm Sandy, engineering firms were hired by insurance companies to inspect the homes of people making claims for flood damage.  There have been allegations that two of the engineering firms, U.S. Forensic out of Louisiana, and GEB HiRise out of Uniondale, forged property damage reports in order to deny claims. The NY State Attorney General is investigating those allegations and wants to talk to the homeowners.  At the same time, there are about 1,800 lawsuits in federal court involving the insurance coverage claims. A three-judge panel is trying to expedite resolution of the cases.  Last week it was revealed that one of the insurance companies, The Standard Fire Insurance Company, which is a subsidiary of Travelers Insurance, drafted language in a settlement document saying that any homeowner who accepts a payout of their claims cannot cooperate with the criminal invest...
Post a Comment
Read more

Recent Case Developments: Contractor Entitled to be Paid For Extra Work Not Part of Original Contract

On September 12, 2013, the Town of Kent (Putnam County) entered into a contract with a contractor to build a sewer.  During construction, certain "conditions that were unexpected and unanticipated" arose, requiring the contractor to do "extra" work--things beyond the scope of work of the original contract. (The appeals court doesn't detail what this extra work was.) The contractor performed the extra work, totaling around $380,000 in additional costs. For reasons not stated by the appeals court, the Town refused to pay for this extra work, and the contractor eventually sued the Town in May, 2015.  The contractor moved for summary judgment in the lower court (a kind of mini-trial on paper), and the court awarded judgment in favor of the contractor for the $380,000.  The Town appealed, but the appeals court sided with the contractor, saying that even though this "extra" work was not within the scope of work of the original contract, the con...
Post a Comment
Read more