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59 Cal. 139

Ward v. Ward

California Supreme Court

Decided July 15, 1881

California Supreme Court · decided 1881-07-15

An appeal from an order of the Superior Court of Santa Clara County. Spenser, J. The amount claimed in the complaint was twenty thousand dollars, and the same was specified in the summons as the amount claimed.

Relies on Lyman v. Milton

Cited in Anderson (1889)’s definition of “Audit”

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1881-07-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 8 later decisions — most recently November 2004

1 district · 7 state decisions

501881189019001910192019301940195019601970198019902000decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

Sharpstein, J.:

¶1This is an appeal from an order vacating a judgment entered by default in an .action brought to recover damages for a breach of contract of marriage. In an action arising on contract, for the recovery of money or damages only, the summons must contain a notice that unless the defendant appears and answers within a specified number of days, the plaintiff will take judgment for the sum demanded in the complaint (stating it). (C. C. P., § 407.)

¶2The notice contained in the summons in this action is as follows: “And you are hereby notified, that if you fail to appear and answer the said complaint as above required, the said plaintiff will apply to the Court for the relief demanded therein.” In other actions than those arising on contracts for the recovery of money or damages only, that would be the appropriate notice to insert in a summons. (Id.)

¶3It is sufficiently obvious that there was a substantial departure in this case from the form of summons prescribed by the code in actions on contracts. In Lyman v. Milton, 44 Cal. 630, the Court said: “We entertain no doubt that a summons must contain all that is required by the statute, whether deemed needful or not.” We have no doubt that the entry of a judgment by default in the absence of a notice in the summons, that in case the defendant failed to appear and answer within the time prescribed by law, the plaintiff would take judgment for the sum demanded in the complaint, was at least such an irregularity as would justify the Court in vacating the judgment. A judgment may now be vacated on motion for any of the matters for which a writ of coram nobis or an audita querela would formerly lie. (Freeman on Judgments, § 93.)

¶4We are unable to discover any ground upon which the order of the court below should be disturbed.

¶5Order appealed from affirmed.

¶6Myrick, J., and Morrison, C. J., concurred.

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