Served with a business lawsuit: the first days
A summons gives you a short, fixed time to respond. Here is how to spend the first days of it well.
A process server hands you an envelope, or a manager finds it on the front desk. Inside are a summons and a complaint. The summons tells you how long you have to answer; that time is short, it starts on the day you were served, and it varies by court.
What to do this week
- Write down the date and how the papers arrived
- Find the contract, invoices and emails the complaint talks about
- Tell your insurer: some policies cover the defense of a lawsuit
- Call a lawyer before you call the other side
What not to do
Don’t delete anything, including texts. Once a lawsuit is likely, you have to keep what relates to it, and losing it can hurt more than anything in it. Don’t write to the other company to explain. Everything you send can become an exhibit.
The complaint is one side’s story, told as strongly as it can be told. It isn’t a finding.
What the answer does
An answer responds to each paragraph of the complaint, raises your defenses and can bring claims of your own. Some defenses are lost if they aren’t raised at the start. If no answer is filed, the court can enter a default judgment, and undoing one is slow and uncertain.
This note is general information. The time to answer and the rules for serving papers differ by court, so check your own deadline with a lawyer the day the papers arrive.