Court Opinion

ID: 9864940
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-25 16:17:30.280123+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:32:45.985111
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Francis E. Bouck
concurring in part.
The motion to set aside the default judgment before us was good if that judgment was erroneous, as the opinion herein states. The motion should have been sustained. There was no attempt to contradict the oral evidence and written affidavits introduced by the defendants and amply supporting the motion. They showed that after service of process upon them the defendants had promptly communicated with a firm of attorneys, who received the defendants’ papers with the express *244agreement to look after the interests of the defendants, who allege a meritorious defense.
Even though there had been serious defects in any showing made, however, there would have been error in refusing to set the judgment aside, because the record clearly reveals on its face that the complaint was issued and served in Montrose county on February 2, 1940, and that judgment was entered on February 23. The defendants’ time to plead included the 20th day thereafter, or the next following juridical day if the 20th day happened to be non-juridical, which it did, the return day being February 22 (Washington’s birthday), a legal holiday. Hence the defendants could not have been in default before the 24th. The district court ought to have taken judicial notice of these facts. The premature and improvident entry of judgment conferred no rights upon the plaintiff as against defendants’ motion.
Moreover, the judgment was in no sense a divisible one, though the opinion so treats it.
The defendants should be allowed to contest the plaintiff’s claim as if no judgment whatever had ever been entered. They should be permitted to present any defense they may have to the alleged cause of action of the plaintiff.
For the reasons stated, this court ought to reverse the judgment as a whole and remand the case with instructions to set aside the default judgment and to grant the defendants leave to plead to the complaint. The judgment of this court is correct as far as it goes, and to that extent I concur; but it should go farther as I have indicated.