Hello - Someone wrote to me with this problem and I don't know how to answer her question. It seems to me that she should be able to get the judgement invalidated.
If she has a legal ground (such as improper service of suit), she may file a motion to vacate judgment. If they fail to respond, chances are her motion would be granted. Saar
That may or may not work. In California, the court needs a valid address for contacting the original plaintiff, and that address has to be supplied by the defendant. If the defendant doesn't have the plaintiffs current address, they may ask you to do a skip trace to locate. Otherwise, the judgement stays as is. Once a judegement is vacated, a date is set for a new hearing (that's why they need the plaintiff to be contacted). Here's an example of what happened when I went to court. The clerk has everything in your judgement file. They will either have a verification that the plaintiff was served and didn't show up, (which is good for you); or they will have verification that the plaintiff was served with notice of that hearing based on the info that yuo supplied when you filed the motion to vacate. To be "fair" the judge will probably continue the case for 30 days while you attempt to locate the plaintiff. That wasn't my case, that was one before mine. On the other hand, if the defendant can deliver a compelling enough argument in court as to why the plaintiff wasn't served with the motion papers, it may slip by. It's best to contact the court advocate to see what their guidelines are; you don't want something like this blowing up in your face.
