Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Federal Court: 2 defendants failed to respond to the complaint, and the rest filed a motion to dismiss. If I file for "entry" default judgme...

Question

Federal Court: 2 defendants failed to respond to the complaint, and the rest filed a motion to dismiss. If I file for "entry" default judgment (Marshal properly served), do I need to respond to the other defendants motion to dismiss? Or does the case stops there pending the court's default judgment?

Assume the court does not enter default judgment, would the court allow me to continue with the case as if I had not filed the default judgment?

Thanks



Answer

You must respond to the motion to dismiss. The attempt to obtain a default judgment against the two remaining defendants is completely independent of your obligation to respond to the motion. Indeed, the attempt to enter default will not even change the due date for your opposition papers.

If the court does not enter default, then the case continues as to the the two defendants who have not yet answered. It's not possible to tell you exactly what that means, since much depends on the reason the Court refuses to enter the default.



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