Re: civil law suit

You should not let a case go to default since a judgment in California can be enforced by filing a sister state judgment in your home state and levying against the assets of the company. Please contact me if you have any other questions.

Re: civil law suit

If you are sued and do not respond, a default can be entered against you and then the judgement can be domesticated in your home state and collected upon.

Joel

Re: civil law suit

In California, there are basically 2 stages for a "default." The first is the Entry of Default -- it is a simple process where the plaintiff merely has to show the court clerk that your failed to respond within 30 days of being served. The next step is a default “judgment” which is a little more more complicated and time consuming to obtain. However once the default judgment is entered, it is enforceable against your company like any other judgment. The fact that your company may be in another state will not insulate it -- US states give "full faith & credit" to sister state judgments.

Depending on how long it has been since the "default" was entered and/or how the company was served with the lawsuit, you have options to have the default set aside. Limited liability companies, like corporations, need an attorney to represent them -- they cannot appear in pro per. But even if your company could, the process for setting aside a default is very technical. Given the potentiall risk, I strongly recommend that you retain California counsel to handle this.

Best of luck

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Re: civil law suit

Failing to respond to a civil lawsuit could result in a judgment entered against you or your company. Once a judgment is entered, the judgment debtor's assets can be garnished or seized.

A judgment issued in California could be registered on Ohio. It would probably be better to fight the lawsuit or negotiate a settlement rather than damage your credit rating.

Re: civil law suit

If you do not respond to the suit and let your default be taken, the court will likely award to the Plaintiff, the judgment that is sought. Failure to contest the lawsuit means that you will not be able to contest the judgment, absent certain situations.

If you need to set aside a default, you can do that generally fairly easy under CCP 473 if you don't wait too long, generally no longer than 180 days after default. There are a whole variety of vagaries with the statute, so don't wait too long. There is never a guarantee of your ability to set aside a default.

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