civil-procedure washington federal-courts
Default judgement on failure to respond to summons
<p>In the case &quot;Raising Cane's USA, LLC et al v. Twins Chicken Inc&quot;, Plaintiff delivers a summons and Defendant appears to never reply. After 3 months, Plaintiff voluntarily withdraws their case instead of pursing the default judgement after 21 days of non-response per FRCP 12(a)(1).</p>
<p>I'm not a lawyer so these might be naive questions:</p>
<ol>
<li>Why didn't the court automatically issue a default judgement after 21 days? Does the plaintiff need to actively pursue it?</li>
<li>Would the case history look like this if the parties settled? I would've expected some public record indication of this.</li>
<li>Practically speaking, why might the plaintiff withdraw their case after receiving no response?</li>
</ol>
<p>History of: 2:15-cv-01298-JLR
<a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/tX848.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/tX848.png" alt="enter image description here" /></a></p>

<h2>Rules of the court</h2>
<ol>
<li>Default judgment is not automatic. The party wanting default has to ask for it.</li>
<li><em>Voluntary Dismissal</em> indicates that the suing party either settled or for some other reason no longer wishes or isn't able to pursue the case anymore.</li>
<li>This is speculative, but the three most common reasons are settling, realizing that the return on investment is bad, or realizing a mistake of fact that would sink the case if it came to trial.</li>
</ol>
