Court of Appeals Cases for January 11th.

The Court of Appeals has published its minutes for January 11th. Click here to view the entire list. Only one interesting published case closely related to torts, involved a reversal of a default judgment.

In Leedy v. Thacker, the Court addressed an appeal of a default judgment and award of damages in two separate cases dealing with the same subject matter. Even though Leedy filed a hand written answer to the complaint, he failed to include a return address. The Thacker's sought to strike his answer for this failure, which was ultimately granted after Leedy failed to attend the hearings on the motion. (The motions were apparently never sent to him since no address was provided.) On appeal Leedy argued the defaults were erroneous, based solely on his failure to include a return address. The court of appeals essentially agreed, noting several instances of Leedy's address in the court file and the fact that he and the plaintiffs had been neighbors for a number of years.