The following article was written by Callagy Law’s Legal Team, and will focus on many common questions and concerns surrounding new developments, legal matters, the court system, and other procedures within business and commercial litigation. Our mission is to answer any questions and give knowledge to many different aspects of these matters.
Knowledge about particular portions of the legal process are starting or, or already have become, common knowledge. For example, most individuals know a civil suit commences with a Complain and in response a defendant files an Answer. This general knowledge impacts a plaintiff’s expectations when initiating the suit, and most do not anticipate the Defendant not answering. Yet, this happens all too often.
A non-answering Defendant can certainly stymie a plaintiff’s expectations to quickly resolve the dispute between the Parties. However, there exist procedural mechanisms to continue litigating a suit even when a Defendant does not answer. One of these procedural mechanisms is called default judgment.
In New York, the statute governing default judgment is the C.P.L.R. 3215. Since, there exist many possibilities of who is moving for default judgment, why and who they are moving against, a hypothetical plaintiff will demonstrate what to do in a particular scenario. To this effect, I will use John Smith. John Smith is moving for Default Judgment in a contract related case for exactly $10,000.00 and served the Defendant, James Doe, by way of personal service. Importantly, John Smith is moving for Default Judgment in less than one year since James Doe was supposed to answer.
John Smith would draft a motion covering the following points, (1) articulating the exact sum James Doe owes him, (2) stating James Doe defaulted by not answering less than one year ago, (3) attaching and describing the method of proper service of process, (4) a description of the facts of John Smith’s claim and (5) additional notice pursuant to C.P.L.R. 3215(g).
Concerning the additional notice of C.P.L.R. 3215(g), John Smith – moving for default judgment on a contract claim against a real person – would need to mail, at least twenty days before judgment is sought, a copy of the summons by first-class mail at James Doe’s place of residence bearing the legend “personal and confidential and not indicating on the outside of the envelope that the communication is from an attorney or concerns an alleged debt.
It is important to note, that the process of default judgment is subject to change depending on who the defendant is, e.g. a real person or a corporate entity, and whether the plaintiff can articulate sum certain how much they are owed. Additionally, it is imperative the defendant in your action was served properly. A defect in service of process can be fatal to a motion for default judgment.
Regardless, default judgment is a plaintiff friendly procedural mechanism to propel litigation forward when a defendant fails to answer a complaint.
We hope you found the information provided in this article helpful to your everyday life and business. Please free to reach out to Sean Callagy or the Callagy Law team at any time for questions you may have concerning personal and business matters. Callagy Law’s headquarters is located conveniently in Paramus, NJ. Beyond the scope of information, Sean Callagy has developed multiple areas of business legal practice and business coaching, if you need help with anything, please reach out to us by calling 201-261-1700 or by emailing us here. Feel free to connect with us on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn! Additionally you can subscribe to our daily videos on YouTube by clicking here.
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DEFAULT JUDGMENTS IN NEW YORK | Callagy Law
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