Legal Question in Civil Litigation in California

If you were never served -- and if you only recently found out about the judgment -- you may be able to have both the default and the judgment set aside. That will not mean you win the lawsuit; it will simply give you the opportunity to start litigating it. In other words, it will set back the clock to shortly after the suit was filed.

You say you are willing to pay the principal, but you do not say what else the judgment includes. You will still be responsible for pre-judgment interest at the statutory rate, running from the date of the overpayment until you resolve your dispute with the EDD. You won't be responsible for post-judgment interest, which will save you some money but perhaps not much depending upon when the default judgment was entered.

I will need to know more about the case in order to say what other savings you might realize by successfully challenging the default judgment.

Judges hear people say all the time that they were never served. If the EDD filed a proof of service by a registered process server, then there is a presumption that you were served. You have to have some really good evidence that you were not served, other than you saying it did not happen, to set it aside.