On July 9, 2026, the First Department issued a decision in G-Unit Books, Inc. v. Tompkins, 2026 NY Slip Op. 04370, holding that a court did not abuse its discretion in denying a default judgment against a defendant whose answer was four months later because of questions regarding whether the defendant was served, explaining:
Supreme Court providently exercised its discretion in denying plaintiff’s motion for a default judgment and granting defendant’s motion for an extension of time to answer the complaint, especially in light of New York’s strong public policy in favor of litigating matters on the merits. Defendant’s delay in answering was only four months, and plaintiff does not allege any prejudice from the relatively short delay. Furthermore, defendant’s excuse for the delay in responding — that she did not receive the summons and complaint — was reasonable given that plaintiff failed to provide evidence that defendant lived at any of the addresses where service was attempted. When plaintiff’s process server tried to serve defendant at an address in Jamaica, he was informed by security staff that she no longer lived in the building. Similarly, when the process server tried over the course of four days to serve defendant at an address on Greene Avenue in Brooklyn, a tenant at the building, a four-story house, informed the process server that he did not know defendant.
We reject plaintiff’s assertion that defendant’s affidavit in support of her motion was conclusory and unsubstantiated. Defendant’s affidavit specifically stated that she did not live at the Jamaica address in 2025, when plaintiff attempted service there, and that she had not lived at the Greene Street address since 2015. She further averred that although she maintained a mailbox at a UPS Store in Bayside, Queens, she did not receive any documents related to the action at that location. Plaintiff provides no legal authority for the claim that defendant must disclose her actual address to prove she was not served.
We also reject plaintiff’s argument that defendant’s failure to respond to the summons and complaint was willful in light of the publicity in online media surrounding the filing of the action. Defendant denied awareness of the action until October 2025, and plaintiff presented no evidence to refute her denial. The statement by TMZ that it sought comment from defendant does not demonstrate that she received notice of the lawsuit, and indeed, TMZ did not state that it was successful in contacting her.
Defendant was not required to offer a meritorious defense to plaintiff’s claims, as plaintiff never obtained a default order or judgment. In any event, defendant was not obligated to prove that she would prevail, only that her defenses were potentially meritorious, and as Supreme Court properly concluded, defendant’s affidavit asserted viable defenses to the action.
(Internal citations omitted).