Kim v. Westmoore Partners, Inc.

Opinion

BEDSWORTH, Acting P. J.

We reluctantly return in this case to the question of default judgments with a cautionary tale—well, three actually. The first is a tale for plaintiff’s attorneys, who may assume a defendant’s default is an unalloyed gift: an opportunity to obtain a big judgment with no significant effort. It is not. Instead, when a defendant fails to timely respond to the complaint, the first thing plaintiff’s counsel should do (after offering an extension of time to respond)1 is review the complaint with care, to ascertain whether it supports the specific judgment the client…