Rule 3.740.Collections cases

Rule 3.740 creates a separate track for a plain kind of debt lawsuit. A “collections case” is an action to recover money owed in a stated, certain sum of $35,000 or less, exclusive of interest and attorney fees, arising out of a transaction where property, services, or money was obtained on credit. It excludes anything more involved than a plain debt claim — tort damages, punitive damages, recovery of real or personal property, and prejudgment writs of attachment all fall outside the definition, even if the underlying transaction involved credit.

Procedurally, a plaintiff who files a collections case has to say so up front by checking the collections-case box on the Civil Case Cover Sheet, form CM-010, and serving that form with the complaint. In exchange, the case is exempt from the general time-for-service requirement in rule 3.110(b) and from the case management rules that apply to ordinary general civil cases — rules 3.712 through 3.715 and 3.721 through 3.730, including the case management conference framework — unless and until a defendant files a responsive pleading. An uncontested collections case, in other words, is meant to move through the system without the standard case management overhead.

To keep those uncontested cases moving, the rule sets firm deadlines with teeth. The plaintiff must serve every defendant, and file proofs of service, or obtain an order for publication of the summons, within 180 days of filing. Missing that deadline exposes the plaintiff to an order to show cause why sanctions shouldn’t be imposed, though filing proof of service or a publication order at least 10 court days before that hearing pushes the case out to a 360-day checkpoint instead. That second checkpoint requires a default judgment within 360 days of filing when defendants haven’t answered, backed by the same order-to-show-cause mechanism if the plaintiff misses it.