You've Been Served. Now What?

The Clock

Service starts a deadline. In Florida state court, a served defendant generally has 20 calendar days to serve a written response; in federal court, generally 21. Miss it, and the plaintiff can ask the clerk or the court for a default — a default concedes the allegations of the complaint, and what remains is largely an argument about how much. Defaults can sometimes be undone, but undoing one is a motion, a fight, and a cost that a calendar entry would have avoided.

So the first move is arithmetic: find the date of service, count the days, and write the deadline down somewhere that will not lose it. If the complaint was served on your company’s registered agent, the clock may have started before the papers reached your desk. One more thing the calendar does not solve: in Florida courts, a company cannot represent itself — the entity’s response must come through a lawyer.

The File

The moment litigation is reasonably anticipated — and being served removes all doubt — a duty attaches to preserve evidence. That means suspending auto-delete policies, keeping the emails, the texts, the invoices, the versions of the contract, and telling the people who touch those systems to stop cleaning up.

Deleting things is how defensible cases can become indefensible. Courts can sanction the destruction of evidence — and a jury told that documents were destroyed tends to assume the worst about what they said.

The Silence

Do not call the plaintiff to talk it out. Do not email an explanation. Do not post about the case, the plaintiff, or your side of the story. Nearly everything you say or write after service is discoverable, and the paragraph you dash off in frustration reads very differently on a deposition exhibit sticker two years later.

Inside the company, keep the circle small. Conversations with your lawyer are generally protected by privilege; conversations around the coffee machine are not.

Coverage

Pull your insurance policies before you assume the answer is no. General liability, directors-and-officers, employment-practices, professional liability — business policies sometimes cover defense costs for claims that do not look “insured” at first read. Most policies require prompt notice of a claim, and late notice can jeopardize coverage that would otherwise have existed. Tender early; let the carrier say no in writing if it is going to say no.

The Response

A response is a choice, not a form. Some complaints deserve a motion to dismiss — because a claim is missing an element, because the wrong party is named, because a required pre-suit step was skipped. Others deserve an answer, affirmative defenses, and a counterclaim. That last decision carries a trap for the unwary: in Florida, a counterclaim arising from the same transaction is generally compulsory — raise it in this case or risk losing it forever.

Which door to take is strategy, not reflex. An accusation is not a verdict, and a complaint is a plaintiff’s best draft of the facts — it has not yet met discovery, cross-examination, or the documents.

Read It Like an Owner

The legal questions — venue, elements, defenses — matter, but they are not the first questions an owner should ask. What does this suit actually threaten? What would winning cost, and what would it be worth? Is there a business relationship here that a scorched-earth defense would burn down? Some cases should be fought to judgment. Others should be resolved early, on terms you can live with. The point of the first week is to keep every one of those doors open.