[AlanC1]

About a year ago I received a summons from North Star Capital Acquisition, assignee of Capital One Bank. After doing much research using this website, I submitted my answer to the summons within the legal time frame and also submitted a Request for Production of Documents to the court and also to the law firm representing NSCA through certified mail.

A few weeks later I received a correspondence from the law firm basically stating that they were not obligated to produce the documents I requested (i.e. signed contract, copy of assignment of the account from Capital One, calculation of the supposed debt, etc.). I did not respond to this letter and received another letter from them a few weeks later which contained a copy of an old statement only.

At this point I was feeling pretty good about my case and while I thought about filing a request for a court date, I did not as I was swamped between work and trying to find a house to buy before the $8,000 home buyer credit expired. I just assumed that once a court date was set I would be notified by the court. Boy was I wrong!! This past week I received a letter from the court stating the following:

"The above and foregoing matter came on regularly before this Court on January 7, 2011, on a peremptory calendar. At the call of the case, the defendant failed to appear and plaintiff made a oral motion to strike the defendant's answer and requested default judgment. Based upon the entire record in this matter, and considering the plaintiff's motion and request, it is ordered that the defendant's answer be and is hereby is stricken from the record. The court grants default judgment in favor of the plaintiff and against defendant in the sum of $900.95, plus $1,146.27 interest, plus cost of court."

Needless to say, I was shocked when I read the letter as I did not receive any notification that the matter was going to appear before the court but the plaintiff somehow knew about it. I called the clerk's office to find out why I did not receive notification and the lady I spoke with could not tell me why and transferred me to Judge's office. The person I spoke with in the Judge's office couldn't tell me why I did not receive any notification of a court and suggested I submit a letter to the judge to reconsider the default judgment. She would not tell me specifically what form to submit, but lead me to believe that I had a chance to get the decision reversed.

After doing some more research, I have found out that the form I need to submit to the court is a Motion to Vacate Judgment. My issue is that I'm not sure what to use as my reason for the motion to vacate. I went and got a copy of the case file from the clerk's office and it did contain a notice for the peremptory court date. Can I use the reason of improper service since either the clerk's office made a mistake and did not mail it to me or the Post Office screwed up and did not forward it to my new address?

[AK lawyer]

... My issue is that I'm not sure what to use as my reason for the motion to vacate. I went and got a copy of the case file from the clerk's office and it did contain a notice for the peremptory court date. Can I use the reason of improper service since either the clerk's office made a mistake and did not mail it to me or the Post Office screwed up and did not forward it to my new address?

Did the notice in the court file show that it was mailed to you?

If not, give as your reason the fact that you were not given notice of the hearing, as shown by the fact that there is no proof of mailing in the court file. Also get something from the post office that shows they had been given the proper change-of-address information before the date the notice was supposedly mailed.

I am also puzzled as to what grounds plaintiff may have given to strike your answer. I understand that you were not at the hearing. But it seems that they would need more than that to have your answer stricken.