12/30/2020
Defendant appealed a trial magistrate’s decision denying a motion to vacate a default judgment. Defendant failed to appear for the matter’s scheduled hearing, which resulted in a default judgment. Then, ten months later, Defendant filed a motion to vacate the judgment. In support of the motion, Defendant asserted that he failed to appear because he had to go to work, but the trial magistrate denied the motion to vacate.
On appeal, Defendant argued that the trial magistrate erred in denying the motion to vacate because the actual reason that Defendant failed to appear was because he never received the summons due to an address change and, therefore, he was unaware that he was supposed to appear in court.
Pursuant to Rhode Island Traffic Tribunal Rule of Procedure 20(a), a court may relieve a party from a judgment for excusable neglect. To establish excusable neglect, a party must show that the cause of the missed deadline was out of the party’s control. See Santos v. D. Laikos, Inc., 139 A.3d 394, 399 (R.I. 2016). Here, the trial magistrate denied the motion to vacate because Defendant’s asserted reason in support of the motion failed to meet the standard of excusable neglect. As such, the Appeals Panel held that the trial magistrate did not err in denying the motion to vacate. Accordingly, the Appeals Panel affirmed the trial magistrate’s decision.
State of Rhode Island v. Albert Lawrence Thomas, No. T20-0005 (December 30, 2020).pdf