ENCORE POST: Opening Default Judgments.
You are served by the sheriff with a civil complaint. The second page informs you that you have twenty days to file a responsive pleading or default judgment may be entered against you. But you don’t. You forgot.
Interesting Contracts Case Appears in Adams Drafting.
Posted by Cliff Tuttle (c) 2009
Suppose that a newly-hired executive deliberately signs a non-compete contract on the company’s signature line. After his employment is terminated, he argues that the contract is invalid because he signed the wrong line on purpose and the company submitted a new document that was never signed. Enforceable? [...]
Compassion on the Supreme Court.
A trial judge rarely sets precedent. He or she has the unique opportunity to do justice to the litigant at bar without usually causing unforeseen consequences to others. Not so an appellate judge. Every word and nuance set down in an appellate opinion has the potential to change the outcome of countless cases to come. This factor multiplies by some exponent when the United States Supreme Court has issued a decision. As numerous justices have noted, there is often a conflict between a just result in a particular case and a rule of law to be applied in all cases.
Rule 237.3: Opening Default Judgment
You are served by the sheriff with a civil complaint. The second page informs you that you have twenty days to file a responsive pleading or default judgment may be entered against you. But you don’t. You forgot.
A notice from the Plaintiff’s attorney come in the mail. You have failed to file an answer in the alloted 20 days, it states, so you must file a responsive pleading within ten days or default judgment may be entered against you.
Ten days passes and you still haven’t filed anything. You’ve been busy.
Then, you receive notice of default judgment from the Prothonotary (or Department of Court Records in Allegheny County). Damn, too late!
Maybe not.
High Official Immunity has a Long History in Pensylvania.
Sometimes a case will turn on whether the public official in question is “high” enough. District attorneys, who make policy, are clearly high public officials. But what about the assistant district attorney? In Durham the Supreme Court held that ADA’s were essential to the DA in doing his job. The immunity was not for the purpose of protecting the official, but benefitting the public. It would serve no public purpose if the DA were immune from suit while the ADA who handled the case was required to defend.