Reyes v. 65 Burnside Meat Market Corp.
- Rearden
- 1:25-cv-01132
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Reyes v. 65 Burnside Meat Market, Judge Rearden extended defendants’ response deadline, vacated defaults, and denied a default-judgment motion as moot.
The order affected the six named defendants, who received additional time to respond and had the Clerk’s Certificates of Default vacated, and Jose Pablo Reyes, whose motion for default judgment was denied as moot.
What happened
In Reyes et al. v. 65 Burnside Meat Market Corp. et al., the defendants asked for more time to respond to Jose Pablo Reyes’s complaint and asked the court to vacate certificates of default entered against them. The defendants’ attorneys said the defendants had not received the summons and complaint from the Secretary of State, and Reyes’s counsel consented to the requests.
The defendants argued that their failure to respond was not willful, that vacating the defaults would not prejudice Reyes, and that they had defenses to the claims. They also asked for an extension through November 14, 2025.
Judge Rearden granted the extension, vacated the Clerk’s Certificates of Default, and denied the motion for default judgment as moot. The court directed the Clerk to terminate the listed docket entries.
The detailed version
- Reyes v. 65 Burnside Meat Market Corp. · No. 1:25-cv-01132
- Rearden
- Oct. 17, 2025
Background
Defendants 65 Burnside Meat Market Corp., Sagal Meat Market III Inc., Sagal Fish Market Inc., Jose Sanchez, Victor Sanchez, Lenny Sanchez, and Fernando Sanchez requested an extension of their deadline to answer or otherwise respond to the complaint filed by Jose Pablo Reyes. They also requested that the court vacate certificates of default entered by the Clerk on September 3, 2025.
Parties’ Positions
In the request, the defendants argued that there was good cause under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 55(c) to set aside the defaults. They asserted that the defendants had not been served with the February 7, 2025 summons and complaint because they had not received anything from the Secretary of State. They also argued that the failure to respond was not willful, that vacating the defaults would not prejudice Reyes, and that the defendants had meritorious defenses because they denied the complaint’s allegations and intended to assert affirmative defenses. The request stated that it was made with Reyes’s counsel’s consent.
Ruling
Judge Rearden granted the request to extend the defendants’ deadline to answer or otherwise respond to the complaint through November 14, 2025. The Clerk’s Certificates of Default at ECF Nos. 40–46 were vacated. The court also denied the motion for default judgment at ECF No. 51 as moot and directed the Clerk to terminate ECF Nos. 51 and 59. The endorsement does not provide separate factual findings or additional explanation beyond these rulings.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.