Legal Question in Civil Litigation in California

The attorney you retain will file an answer or other legal response within 30 days after you were served. Do not wait until day 29 to retain an attorney.

If no summons was issued by the court, you have not been validly served. The complaint alone is not sufficient. With that said, defective service is not grounds for dismissing a complaint. At best, you could file a motion to quash service of summons, and that would cost you some filing fees and waste some time. Then the plaintiff would just be ordered to serve you correctly, and you would still be in the lawsuit as a defendant. I suggest speaking to an attorney to determine your best options.

I'm not sure why they would have served you with the complaint but not the summons. That is just odd. In any case, it is common not to file the summons after service until it is time to take a default. So the fact that the summons has not been filed is irrelevant. Presumably it was issued, because the court clerks will not accept a complaint for filing without a summons to be issued with it. Therefore, your best course is just to answer, unless the complaint was not even filed before it was served. In that case, with no summons and an unfiled complaint, you may not yet have any case pending against you, yet.