In the recent decision of Blaunt v. Berkovits, the Second Department held that the trial court had erred in excusing defendant’s default in failing to timely answer the complaint. Let this be a lesson — though parties are usually lax about a couple of days and many are willing to provide stipulations extending time to answer — the New York State Courts are not always as forgiving. Here, they determined that though there was only a short delay in answering the complaint, the defendants failed to provide any satisfactory explanation for the delay and failed to make any showing of any potentially meritorious defense to the claims raised by plaintiff.

Thanks to Alison Weintraub for her contribution to this post.

http://www.courts.state.ny.us/reporter/3dseries/2010/2010_07707.htm