Learning Late About a New York MCA Judgment From Mississippi

The date you found out is not the date that counts

A Mississippi business learns, in passing, that there is a judgment against it. A lender mentions it. A credit report shows it. A bank asks a question. The lawsuit it came from happened somewhere else, some time ago, and nobody in the building remembers being told.

The natural way to describe this is "we only just found out". That sentence is important for explaining a delay and it is not the sentence the rules measure from. The rules measure from recorded events, and there are four of them.

The four dates

1. When you were served. Or when service was claimed, and by what method. This is in the affidavit of service.

2. When the default occurred. The appearance period having run without an appearance. CPLR § 320 sets that period at twenty days after service of the summons, with longer periods in defined circumstances including particular methods of service, so this date is computed from date one.

3. When judgment was entered. On the docket. Under CPLR § 3215 a plaintiff whose defendant has failed to appear or plead may seek a default judgment, and for a sum certain the clerk may enter it on the requisite proof within a year of the default.

4. When a copy of the judgment with written notice of its entry was served on you. This is the one almost nobody knows about, and it is the one that starts the most commonly used clock.

Why the fourth date is the important one

CPLR Rule 5015 allows the court which rendered a judgment to relieve a party from it, on motion, upon specified grounds. The first listed is excusable default — and that ground runs within one year after service of a copy of the judgment or order with written notice of its entry upon the moving party, or, where the moving party entered it, within one year after entry.

So the window is not measured from entry. It is measured from service of notice of entry. Those can be the same week or they can be a long way apart, and in a case where a defendant never appeared, whether notice of entry was ever served at all is a real question.

Which means the honest first step for a business that found out late is not to assume the time has run. It is to find out whether the clock ever started.

Where all four dates live

In the court file, located from the county and the index number. The docket shows entry. The affidavit of service shows service. Any affidavit of service of notice of entry shows the fourth date.

If the judgment surfaced through a bank or a credit report, the county and index number can usually be obtained from that source in writing, and that is enough to find everything else.

What "nobody told me" is actually worth

It is worth something, as part of an explanation, in the right frame.

An application of this kind generally asks the court to accept a reason for the default. A business that can show the papers went to an address it had left, or to a person who had no authority, or that it had no notice of entry, is explaining the default with documents rather than with regret. A business that can only say it was unaware is in a weaker position with the same feelings.

The difference between those two is research in the court file, which is why this page is mostly about where to look.

What to do first, from Mississippi

1. Get the county and index number from whoever told you the judgment exists, in writing.
2. Obtain the full docket, the affidavit of service, and the judgment.
3. Establish whether notice of entry was ever served, and when.
4. Do not assume you are out of time. The window depends on a date you may not have yet.

How an MCA lawsuit is defended covers a case that is still live. If the judgment came with no lawsuit at all, a confession of judgment is usually the mechanism, and a restrained account is what happens next.