Legal Question in Civil Rights Law in California

A default may only be entered, generally, when the defendant has not filed a responsive pleading. Since the defendant in your case had answered with denials, that is sufficient to put the case at issue. If there exist no triable issues of material fact, you could file a motion for summary judgment. However, it might be wise to do discovery before filing this motion because you don't know what facts and/or evidence the defendant has that might convince the court to deny this motion and set the case moving toward trial. Also, since you already have made a procedural misstep, you should consider retaining an attorney to get the job done correctly.