Eric Rogers v. Jack's Coffee, LLC
- Andrew Carter
- 1:18-cv-10021-ALC
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Eric Rogers v. Jack’s Coffee, Judge Carter denied Rogers’s pending default-judgment motion after an amended complaint replaced a defendant.
Eric Rogers, whose motion for default judgment was denied, and the defendants named in the amended complaint.
What happened
In Eric Rogers v. Jack’s Coffee, LLC, Eric Rogers sought a default judgment against a defendant that had not responded to the court’s order to explain why judgment should not be entered. The court required Rogers to file a formal motion and supporting legal and factual memorandum.
The court later allowed Rogers to amend his complaint, replacing Jack’s Coffee, LLC with Jack’s Holding (FVP) LLC. Rogers filed the amended complaint the same day. The court treated that amended complaint as the operative document in the case.
Because Rogers’s pending default-judgment motion was based on the earlier complaint, the court denied the motion. Judge Andrew L. Carter, Jr. also directed Rogers to serve the order on the defendants and file proof of service by May 28, 2021.
The detailed version
- Eric Rogers v. Jack's Coffee, LLC · No. 1:18-cv-10021-ALC
- Andrew Carter
- May 21, 2021
Background
Eric Rogers filed a proposed default judgment and supporting affirmation on July 8, 2019. The court later directed Defendant 138-140 Village Owners Corp. to show why a default judgment should not be entered. The court then vacated that order because Rogers had not filed the formal default-judgment motion and the legal and factual memorandum required by Judge Carter’s individual practices.
Rogers later filed the required motion and memorandum. The court issued another order directing 138-140 Village Owners Corp. to show cause under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 55, which governs default judgments. The opinion states that 138-140 Village Owners Corp. had not responded.
Amended Complaint and Ruling
On April 21, 2021, the court allowed Rogers to file an amended complaint substituting Jack’s Holding (FVP) LLC for Jack’s Coffee, LLC. Rogers filed the amended complaint that same day. An amended complaint becomes the operative pleading when filed, so the pending motion for default judgment—based on the earlier pleading—could not proceed on that earlier version.
The court therefore denied Rogers’s pending motion for default judgment. It directed the Clerk of Court to terminate ECF No. 24. The court also directed Rogers to serve a copy of the order on the defendants and file proof of service by May 28, 2021.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.