I received a Plaintiff's First Set of Special Interrogatories to Defendant, Plaintiff's First Set of Request for Inspection and Production of Documents & Request for Admissions from the attorney who is suing me for a debt. This is after I filed a General Denial. My questions are: #1, how important is it to respond within the 30 days after service. #2. Do I have to respond to all 3 documents within the 30 days?, #3. At this point is it best to hire an attorney, or are the responses to these documents something I can do on my own? I'm pretty much denying everything since I have no idea what the debt is for, and can't really provide them with any documents, because I dont have any.
Thank you.
Nereida Turcios
Answer
It is very important to respond to all three within the 30-day period (unless the person who sent them to agrees to an extension of time, in writing). Your failure to respond could result in the plaintiff brining a motion to compel those responses, and possible monetary sanctions against you by the court. If you have the time to spend in a law library figuring out what you need to do, you could do the responses yourself. However, there are very specific rules concerning discovery which you must follow (such as providing the responses under oath) or any response you give may be no better than no response at all. It would be better for you to hire an attorney to represent you so you don't do something wrong.
Answer
What's wrong with this picture? You should have written a debt validation letter the first time you received a bill. Then, when you were sued, you should have consulted an attorney instead of filing forms with the court on your own. By doing so you may have waived good defenses to the lawsuit. If you really have a defense, such as it's not your debt, in all probability your attorney fees would be reimbursed. Many attorneys take cases like yours for modest fees. Start calling attorneys.
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