No notification

[ricky2006]

What is the name of your state? LA

I am the defendant in a credit card dispute over some unauthorized charges in my account. When I refused to pay, the bank sued me. I called the court today to update them on my new address and learned that the plaintiff attorney filed a motion for summary judgement some time ago and a hearing is scheduled for tomorrow. I received no notification from the court or from the attorney on this motion and both have my address and fax number. What should I do? Will it be easy to get an extension?

[Chien]

We're balancing two equities here. (Oops - forgot - you're Napoleonic law there in LA - well, call it fairness.) There's fairness to you and fairness to the attorney. I would speculate that, in the end, you win, but it's not guaranteed and it may come with a price attached.

It would probably help you, if you went a little early and asked the clerk if you could see the court file. You're looking for the Proof or Affidavit of Service of the motion - when it was mailed and to what address.

You called the Court to inform it of a new address. That's nice, but you should have formally notified the attorney when it happened. The attorney is only obligated to give notice of the motion to your "address of record". That's the one that was on all of your court filings before the move. Let's assume that he/she did that - they've done nothing wrong and, if you haven't mentioned your new address to them yet, they're going to show up tomorrow expecting the proceed as scheduled. (A courteous telephone call may solve all your problems and allow you to agree on a new future date and then get the Court to agree on a continued hearing date.)

BTW, you didn't mention if mail got forwarded. For the purpose of your question, we'll assume that it wasn't. Hope that's true for your sake.

In fairness to you, Court's don't like to see litigants get slam-dunked and probably go a litlle further than is required with pro pers/pro ses. That's the only reason I think the balanace may be leaning in your favor. But, at the same time, if you're representing yourself, you're expected to know the relevant rules and procedures. If you get an extension, don't expect to keep slipping by on an "Oh gee whiz" kind of innocence.

So I think the odds are in your favor for some extension but perhaps not as long as you would have had with normal service and you may have to pay some fees and expenses for the need for counsel to appear needlessly.

[Debt Guy]

Go read the original summons you were served. It is almost certain that contained in that summons was a notice of a deadline for filing your response. I bet you never filed anything. If that is correct, then you have most likely "waived" your response. Note that LA does have some very unusual legal practices and procedures (that Napoleon thing).

If these were unauthorized charges, you should have filed a denial and asked for discovery of documents from the plaintiff or a hearing before the judge.

A motion for summary judgment would be the logical next step for the plaintiff.

It is very unlikely that you can get an extension if you missed the filing deadline. You can show up for the hearing and ask the judge. I guess you could file your own motion for summary judgment but you are really late to start working on drafting a motion.

Do you have any credible and verifiable defense for this debt? If so, now would be the time to talk fast.

[Chien]

Whoa. I inferred that you had responded and were INTO litigation. DG seems to have inferred that you did nothing timely. If he's right, just ignore my response. And since you were able to learn of the motion for S/J, I doubt that you can talk fast enough.