You’ve Been Sued: The First 30 Days

When your business is served with a lawsuit, a clock starts, in Florida state court, generally 20 days to respond, and the first month determines more of the case’s trajectory than any month that follows. The essential moves are knowable: calendar the deadline and protect against default, preserve every relevant document and communication, notify your insurers, engage counsel and get the story assembled accurately, and say nothing to anyone that you would not want read back to you under oath. Businesses that execute that list calmly start even. Businesses that improvise start behind, sometimes unrecoverably.

I defend commercial cases across Florida, for institutional owners and for closely-held companies experiencing their first lawsuit, and the difference between those two client types in week one is composure, not competence. This article is the composure, written down.

What must happen immediately to protect the case?

First, treat service as a fire alarm with a timestamp. Record exactly when and how each defendant was served, because response deadlines run from service, and confirm who was served, since complaints often name the entity, affiliates, and individuals separately, each with its own clock. A defendant who misses the deadline faces default, and while Florida procedure provides mechanisms for addressing defaults, vacating one is uncertain, expensive, and a terrible way to meet your judge. Nothing in the first month matters more than making default impossible.

Second, implement a litigation hold the same day: a written instruction to everyone who may hold relevant material, suspending routine deletion and preserving emails, texts, files, recordings, and the systems they live on. Spoliation, the loss of evidence you were obligated to keep, can produce sanctions and adverse inferences that damage a defensible case worse than the underlying facts, and modern disputes are won and lost in text threads. The hold is unglamorous, it is counsel’s first-day request, and it is the cheapest insurance in litigation.

Why is the insurance tender so urgent?

Because coverage can transform the economics of the case, and delay can forfeit it. Commercial general liability, professional liability, employment practices, directors and officers, and cyber policies each respond to different claims, and complaints are frequently pleaded in ways that touch coverage without announcing it. The discipline is mechanical: gather every potentially applicable policy, tender the suit to every plausible carrier promptly and in writing, and let the carriers make their coverage decisions, because the insured who pre-screens claims for the insurer, deciding on its own that no coverage exists, is doing free work for the wrong side.

Read the carrier responses with counsel, because the vocabulary matters: a defense provided under a reservation of rights, a denial worth contesting, the interplay between the duty to defend, which is broad, and the duty to indemnify, which is narrower. In tenant-default and property litigation on my landlord-side dockets, insurance questions ride alongside constantly, and the parties who tendered early consistently hold better positions than the parties who remembered insurance at mediation. Late notice is one of the few unforced errors that can convert a covered claim into an uncovered one.

What should you do about the story itself?

Assemble it accurately before memory and motivation start editing. Counsel’s early work is a factual audit: the contracts and their amendments, the complete communications thread, the key custodians and what each actually knows, the timeline reconstructed against documents rather than recollection. The candid version, including the unhelpful parts, is the only version that supports good strategy, because the unhelpful facts will surface in discovery regardless, and the lawyer who learns them from opposing counsel is defending with a map drawn by the enemy.

At the same time, contain the communications. Internal discussion of the lawsuit should be narrow and channeled through counsel, because ordinary emails about the case are discoverable while properly structured attorney-client communications are privileged, and employees speculating in writing manufacture exhibits. Externally, the rules are simpler: no contact with the plaintiff outside counsel, no discussion with customers or vendors beyond a prepared neutral line if one is needed, and nothing, truly nothing, on social media. The case will be decided on evidence. The first month is when a defendant decides how much evidence to create against itself.

What are the early strategic decisions?

Within the response window, real choices exist and should be made deliberately rather than by default. The responsive pleading itself: motions attacking the complaint’s sufficiency, venue, or the arbitration clause the plaintiff ignored can reshape or relocate the case, and compulsory counterclaims, claims arising from the same transaction, must generally be raised or risk being lost, which makes the first response a strategic document rather than a formality. Removal questions, when federal court is available and advantageous, run on their own short clock. And the early case assessment, merits, exposure range, collectability of any counterclaims, fee-shifting provisions, coverage posture, should produce a written budget and a strategy with decision points, exactly the discipline article one of this series demanded of plaintiffs.

Then decide the settlement posture on purpose. Early resolution is sometimes the intelligent business answer and is cheapest before positions harden and fees accumulate, and Florida’s court systems will push the parties toward mediation eventually in most commercial cases regardless. Signaling openness is not weakness when it is paired with visible readiness to defend, which is the same credibility equation that runs through this whole series from the other side. Being sued is a business problem with legal machinery attached. The first thirty days are for taking control of the machinery before it takes control of the business.

Vendors, lenders, and key customers may also need managed: some contracts and credit agreements require notice of material litigation, and a lender who learns of the suit from a records search trusts you less than one who heard it from you with context. Inventory those notice obligations in week one with counsel, because compliance is cheap and discovered silence is expensive.

Frequently asked questions

What happens if my business ignores a lawsuit?

Default, followed by a default judgment for what the plaintiff requested, followed by collection against the business’s assets. Courts can set defaults aside in limited circumstances, but relief is discretionary and expensive to seek. There is no commercial dispute so weak that ignoring it improves it.

Should I call the person suing me to work it out?

Not directly once counsel is involved on either side, and not without preparation in any event: statements made in those calls are evidence. Settlement conversations are valuable and should happen through channels that protect them, which counsel can open within days if resolution is realistic.

Does my business insurance cover lawsuits against the company?

Frequently, in whole or part, depending on the claims pleaded and the policies held, and the duty to defend can put the carrier’s money behind your lawyers even for claims that ultimately are not indemnified. Tender everything plausible, promptly, in writing, and let coverage counsel argue the close calls.

Talk with Michael

The first month of a lawsuit rewards composure and punishes improvisation. I defend businesses across Florida’s commercial courts at AEGIS Law. Reach me at msinger@aegislaw.com.

By Michael Singer, Commercial Litigation & Real Estate Attorney, AEGIS Law

This article is for general information only and is not legal advice. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship with AEGIS Law.