You Have Been Served: The First Two Weeks

Purpose

A default judgment is the worst avoidable outcome in any dispute a shop will face. It is entered because nobody responded, not because anybody lost, and it carries the full amount claimed with the merits never heard. Setting one aside is possible in some circumstances and expensive in all of them.

This procedure makes the period between papers arriving and a response being filed run the same way whoever opens the envelope, and it protects the two things easiest to lose in that window: insurance coverage that was otherwise owed to you, and evidence sitting on a phone.

Nothing here is legal advice about your matter. The deadline below is set by the court that issued your summons, and it is the one number you read off your own paperwork rather than off this page.

Scope

Covers civil lawsuits served on the business or on an owner in their business capacity: customer, supplier, employment and collection suits filed against you, and small-claims actions where you are the defendant.

Does not cover a demand letter or a pre-suit statutory notice, which run under the demand-letter card that owns first response, or a subpoena in someone else's case, which carries different obligations. Criminal process and a licensing-board or safety-agency citation go straight to counsel and do not follow this sequence.

Roles and responsibilities

The handoff that actually fails is the first one: papers handed to a field supervisor who leaves them on a truck dash, with days of the clock gone before anyone who understands it sees them.

Procedure

Step 1. Date-stamp and copy everything the moment it arrives. Scan every page including the envelope, write the date and time of receipt on the front, record who handed it to whom. Acceptance: a complete dated copy in the file within one hour, naming the person served and the manner of service shown on the return. Wrong looks like a stapled stack nobody has counted, missing page 4 of 22, which is how a shop learns weeks later that the exhibit describing the claim was never read. Stop rule: if the receipt date is uncertain because the papers sat somewhere, use the earliest date service could plausibly have occurred. Exposure: an undated copy cannot prove when the clock started if service is later contested.

Step 2. Read the SUMMONS, not the complaint, and compute one deadline. The complaint says what they claim; the summons says how long you have and what happens if you do not answer. Federal cases run 21 days after service under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(a)(1)(A)(i), but most suits against a shop sit in state court, where the state's rule governs and genuinely differs: California gives 30 days after service under Code of Civil Procedure section 412.20, Florida 20 days under Rule 1.140(a), Texas the Monday following the expiration of 20 days under Rule 99(b). Acceptance: one date on the shop calendar taken off the summons, reminder 7 days ahead. Wrong looks like counting from the date printed on the complaint, which is when it was filed. Stop rule: if you cannot tell which period applies, call that court's clerk, then confirm with counsel at step 5. Exposure: this step is what prevents the default.

Step 3. Notify every insurer that could owe a defence, in writing, the day the papers arrive. Send the complete papers to carrier and broker with delivery confirmation, and notify more than one where more than one could apply: general liability for property damage or injury, employment practices for an employee claim, auto where a vehicle is involved. Acceptance: written notice with papers attached, same business day, delivery confirmation retained and the policy number named. Wrong looks like waiting to see whether the case goes anywhere. Prompt notice is a policy condition, and whether late notice forfeits coverage varies by state, with many requiring the insurer to show prejudice and others not requiring it at all - none of which is a reason to test it. Stop rule: if you cannot identify the right carrier, notify the broker in writing that day and keep the email. Exposure: a defence you were contractually owed is the largest asset here.

Step 4. Issue a written litigation hold and lock down communications in the same notice. Send a dated notice to everyone whose records could touch the matter, naming the customer, the job, the date range and the categories to preserve: texts on personal phones, photos, voicemail, dispatch and GPS records, the accounting file, email. Suspend automatic deletion in each system, including the ones nobody configured. In the same notice name the single person who speaks about the matter, and set three prohibitions: nobody contacts the plaintiff or their lawyer, nobody posts about it, nobody edits, backdates, tidies or deletes any record touching the job. Acceptance: a dated notice acknowledged by each recipient, plus written confirmation from each system's administrator that auto-deletion is off. Wrong looks like a verbal instruction at a huddle, or a service manager tidying a messy job file because it looks unprofessional. Stop rule: if a phone was already wiped, a system already purged or a record already altered, preserve what remains, write down what changed and when, and tell counsel that day. Exposure: an adverse-inference instruction, where the court may tell the jury to assume the missing material was unfavourable to you.

Step 5. Retain counsel and have them confirm the deadline in writing. Engage a lawyer in the right practice area for this claim, sign an engagement letter stating scope and fee structure, and get their written confirmation of the response date and of who files the appearance. Acceptance: a signed engagement letter on file and a written deadline from counsel matching step 2. Wrong looks like a verbal "I will look at it" with no engagement letter, which leaves nobody responsible for the filing. Stop rule: if the two dates disagree, counsel's governs, but ask which rule produced it; past halfway to the deadline with nobody engaged, ask on that call whether an extension of time to respond is available in that court. Exposure: none physical, a decision made at a desk. See related: Choosing a Lawyer for a Shop This Size.

Step 6. Assemble the file to a chronological index and name the gaps out loud. Build one chronology: contract or work order, change orders, invoices and payments, job notes, dated photos, texts and emails in date order, dispatch and GPS records, personnel records. Acceptance: a numbered index where every entry carries a date, delivered to counsel, plus a separate written list of everything you looked for and could not find. Wrong looks like a box of paper and a promise to find the rest. Stop rule: where a record is missing, write down what it was and when and how it went, check the other end of every communication (the customer's copy, the server-side copy the phone does not hold), and give counsel the gap in writing before anyone else finds it. Exposure: an undisclosed gap costs far more at deposition than the same gap disclosed on day 14.

Step 7. Confirm the response was actually filed, and hold the confirmation. Do not assume. Ask counsel for the file-stamped copy and put it in the matter file. Acceptance: a copy of the answer or other response bearing the court's file stamp, dated at or before the step 2 deadline. Wrong looks like an email saying it went out today with nothing stamped, which is what a shop is holding when it learns a filing was rejected for a formatting defect. Stop rule: if no stamped copy exists by the deadline, call counsel the same day and then the clerk to confirm the docket, because entry of default under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 55(a) and its state equivalents starts with the clerk, not at a hearing anyone attends. Exposure: the last point at which a default is still cheap to prevent.

Intending to settle changes none of the above. The response is filed anyway, because settlement talks do not stop the clock and a default entered mid-negotiation removes every reason for the other side to keep negotiating.

The record this produces

One matter file, six dated artifacts: the stamped papers with receipt date, time and manner of service; the calendared response date with the rule or clerk statement behind it; the insurer and broker notices with delivery confirmations and policy numbers; the hold notice with acknowledgements and each system's auto-deletion confirmation; the chronological index with its written gap list; the file-stamped response. The later readers are your own lawyer at the first strategy call, a coverage lawyer if the carrier reserves rights, and, in the unlucky case, a court deciding whether evidence went missing through ordinary business practice or through something else. The hold notice and the gap list are the two nobody can reconstruct after the fact.

A worked pass

An electrical shop is served Tuesday March 3 through its registered agent. The papers reach the owner Thursday March 5. The claim is property damage at a commercial tenant fit-out finished the previous summer.

Step 1 passes with a caveat: the papers are stamped March 5, but the return of service shows March 3, so the stop rule applies and every deadline runs from March 3. Step 2: the summons states 30 days after service, March 3 plus 30 days is April 2, calendar entry April 2 with the reminder March 26, which is 7 days ahead.

Step 3 passes on March 5 - two days after service, but the same business day the owner received the papers, which is what the acceptance asks. Carrier and broker get the full papers with delivery confirmation, and the broker confirms March 9 that general liability is the right policy, since the allegation is damage to the tenant's stock rather than to the shop's own installed work. Step 4 issues March 5 to four people; three acknowledge, and the dispatch administrator confirms retention is set to 24 months and untouched. Step 5: counsel engaged March 10, day 7 from service, letter signed, April 2 confirmed independently.

Step 6 fails on March 12. The lead tech on that job left in the autumn and his phone was wiped and reissued to a new hire. Roughly five months of texts with the tenant's facilities contact are gone, including the exchange approving a change to the panel location. The stop rule runs instead of the step: the gap is written down with the date the phone was reissued, the other end is checked, and the tenant's own email archive turns out to hold the thread those texts were later confirmed in. Counsel is told March 12, not at a deposition, and the recovered material goes on the index labelled as recovered from the other side rather than from the shop's records.

Step 6 passes on its second run: index delivered March 17, day 14, with a one-page gap list. Step 7: the answer is file-stamped March 30, three days ahead of April 2, and the stamped copy is filed that day.

Every acceptance is met except step 6's first attempt, and what saved it was step 4's honesty rule rather than any clever recovery. The tech left five months before litigation was anticipated, so there was no hold to violate, which is why disclosing the gap on day 14 cost nothing and finding it at deposition would have cost the case its credibility.

References

• Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 12(a) and 55, which govern federal cases only; state courts set their own response periods
• California Code of Civil Procedure section 412.20; Florida Rule of Civil Procedure 1.140(a); Texas Rule of Civil Procedure 99(b)
• Standard commercial general liability conditions on notice of suit and duty to defend; confirm against your own policy
• See related: Preserving Evidence the Moment a Dispute Starts, A Demand Letter Arrives, Choosing a Lawyer for a Shop This Size