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Was sent a "Notice of Case Filing and Assignment"
Anonymous4 views4 answers
...it is regarding a creditor trying to extract money from us. We were in the phase of Discovery, and provided many answers (most of them objections). The case type is listed as "Default Judgment". What does this mean? They can't "default" a judgement on us because we provided full answers every step of the way.
Go to www.mncourts.gov and got to find a Court case and look it up to see if a default judgment has been entered. The fact that the Court sent you notice of Case filing, rather than notice of entry of judgment makes me think that there is no judgment yet. The "Case Type" is a new line on the pleadings, instituted a few years ago, and really only used for the Courts' purposes of tracking what kind of cases they see, and assigning an even caseload to each judge. A lot of times, lawyers are reusing old pleadings, just changing the names and so on, and sometimes they forget to change the case type. If the Courts' website does not say judgment was entered, then this case type is probably a simple failure to change something on the part of either a legal assistant somewhere, or a court clerk somewhere checked the wrong box.
If it is a default judgment you should go down to the Government Center and look at the Court file and see what happened. If the other side did something wrong, you need to see a lawyer about possibly making a Motion to Vacate the Judgment, and looking into whether the collection attorney has violated the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.
If I am right and there is not a judgment yet, you can bet they are preparing to make a Motion For Summary Judgment. You need a lawyer. I have worked as a collection attorney, and I never lost a case to a party who was representing themself. When the defendants had an attorney, my record was much worse. Since I have been on the consumer's side (4+ years) I have won defeated s7ummary judgment motions by collection attorneys many times. Unless you are one of the rare self-taught litigants who truly understands civil procedure and legal research, you shouldn't fool around with representing yourself once it gets to this point.
You should get a copy of the case file from the court and take it to a collection defense attorney near you who can advise you what happened. If you did not file the proper legal response to the lawsuit, it is possible the creditor may have obtained a default judgment. Although you participated in discovery, that is a separate matter from properly responding to the initial complaint. More information is needed to advise you of what is going on.
You wrote, "They can't "default" a judgement on us because we provided full answers every step of the way."
A: Actually they can if they follow the rules.
If you received a "Notice of Case Filing and Assignment," it means that the creditor filed their case with the Court. The "case type" listed on the documents is mostly irrelevant - it's an internal court accounting issue. But, you now need to file your Answer (which, presumably, you properly served upon the creditor?) with the court, pay the filing fees, etc.
Here's the real question - you say that the creditor is trying to "extract" money from you. How? Are you claiming, legitimately, that you don't owe this debt at all? That's it has been paid or is otherwise a total error - you don't actually owe a debt to this creditor at all? If that's the case, then you need to litigate this matter to defend an erroneous lawsuit. But, if all you're doing is trying to tie up the creditor with litigation based upon technicalities and bogus claims, you're simply wasting your time. Courts have little tolerance for debtors engaging in pointless litigation.
