Legal Question in Credit and Debt Law in New York

Re: Old Debt

The statute of limitations is 6 years. If a company files a summons with the court within the 6 years, that company commenced an action within the statute of limitations period.

If the action was commenced without proper service of the summons, the court does not have personal jurisdiction to enter a default judgment against the defendant. To vacate the default judgment, the defendant must file a motion by Order to Show Cause to vacate judgment. The motion must set forth the reason why default judgment must be vacated. If the summons was filed in NY in Feb. of 2007 and you were living in WA since March 2006, you may have grounds to vacate the judgment.

Mike.

Re: Old Debt

Regarding your question about whether it is legal to file a judgment and win without telling debtor, the answer is no, but in NY there is a perennial problem with "gutter service" in these type of matters.

Creditor through a process server presumably made service at last known address it had for you in NY using �nail & mail� service. You never received the papers so weren�t aware of it. Creditor got judgment by default.

You can seek to set aside judgment by order to show cause, but if you are now in Washington state you will probably want to hire an attorney so you don�t have to travel back to NY personally to deal with this. The one thing you failed to mention in your post is how much the judgment is for. Unfortunately, the economics of which way to proceed will make the most sense depends a lot on amount of judgment. If it is for $6,000 that is one thing, and if it for $600 that is another. It may not make economic sense to hire an attorney to deal with a smaller judgment if you will spend more on attorneys� fees than the judgment is for.

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