The Second District has ruled that a trial court abused its discretion by entering default judgment against the defendants because the court never ruled on a motion to extend time to answer.
The motion came in the form of a letter from one defendant, who was also the sole owner of the other (corporate) defendant. The letter was received and journalized within the answer period of Rule 12(A)(1). The plaintiffs’ motion for default judgment was filed approximately a week after the letter was received and the answer time expired. Approximately a month after the MDJ was filed, and approximately five weeks after the letter-motion was filed, the trial court granted the plaintiffs’ motion for default judgment, noting that it had “allowed some time to pass after [the defendants] requested an extension to allow counsel for [the defendants] to answer or for [the individual defendant] to answer pro se,” and that neither event had occurred.
The court of appeals held that the trial court’s failure to journalize an entry either granting or denying the motion for additional time amounted to an implicit denial of the motion–notwithstanding the fact that the trial court withheld ruling on the motion for default judgment for about a month. Such denial of the motion for additional time was an abuse of discretion.
In support of this ruling the appellate court noted that if the defendants had filed an answer between the time their motion was filed and the time default judgment was entered, the answer would have been untimely and without leave, and would have been vulnerable to being stricken. In other words, the court of appeals held that the defendants were better off doing nothing than affirmatively defending the case.
The case is Bentley v. Grey Fox Homes, Ltd., 2009-Ohio-5038 [PDF].
This post was written by Jeffrey M. Nye.
