De Los Santos v. 94 Corner Cafe Corp.
- Katharine Parker
- 1:21-cv-01577
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 4
In De Los Santos v. 94 Corner Cafe Corp., Judge Vyskocil ordered plaintiff to seek default judgment by April 7 after defendants failed to respond.
The plaintiff and all defendants were affected. The order set a deadline for the plaintiff to seek default judgment and continued to require the individual defendants to respond; it also addressed the corporation’s inability to proceed without a lawyer.
What happened
In De Los Santos v. 94 Corner Cafe Corp., Felipe Cirne De Los Santos sued 94 Corner Cafe Corp. and four individual defendants. The defendants were served, but the corporation did not obtain a lawyer, and the individual defendants did not file a response to the complaint.
The court repeatedly extended deadlines and warned that failing to respond could lead to default judgment. The individual defendants asked to file a late dismissal motion, but they did not provide an actual motion or arguments supporting dismissal.
Judge Vyskocil ordered that any request for default judgment be filed by April 7, 2022. The court did not decide the claims or enter default judgment, and it warned that failing to meet the deadline could lead to dismissal for failure to prosecute.
The detailed version
- De Los Santos v. 94 Corner Cafe Corp. · No. 1:21-cv-01577
- Katharine Parker
- Mar. 7, 2022
Background
Felipe Cirne De Los Santos filed the complaint on February 22, 2021, and filed proof that all defendants had been served in June 2021. The defendants were 94 Corner Cafe Corp. and Mohinder Singh, Balwinder Singh, Parmajit Kaur, and Kadra Zarwi.
Mohinder Singh, who was proceeding without a lawyer, sent a letter asking for dismissal based on what he described as inaccurate accusations. The court treated the letter as a request for a conference before a possible dismissal motion by Mohinder Singh. The court directed the other individual defendants to answer and told 94 Corner Cafe Corp. that, because it is a corporation, it could not proceed without a lawyer and had to retain counsel.
The defendants later submitted another letter asking for dismissal and stating that the corporation would have difficulty retaining counsel because of its financial circumstances. The court repeatedly extended the corporation’s deadline to retain counsel and warned that failure to do so could result in default judgment. The individual defendants were eventually given permission to file a dismissal motion by December 6, 2021.
Failure to Respond
The defendants did not file the permitted dismissal motion. On January 5, 2022, the court directed them to answer or otherwise respond to the complaint by February 7, 2022, again warning that failure to do so could result in default judgment. In a January 26 letter, the individual defendants said they had misunderstood the deadlines and asked the court to accept their dismissal motion. They did not attach a motion or provide arguments explaining why the complaint should be dismissed.
Ruling
Because the defendants had not answered or otherwise responded to the complaint, the court ordered that any motion for entry of a default judgment be filed by April 7, 2022. A default judgment is a judgment that may be entered when a defendant fails to respond to a lawsuit. The court directed the plaintiff to follow the procedures in the judge’s individual rules. It warned that failure to seek default judgment by the deadline could result in dismissal of the action for failure to prosecute, meaning failure to move the case forward.
The order did not enter default judgment, rule on a dismissal motion, or decide the merits of the plaintiff’s claims.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.