미국 연방민사소송에서의 궐석판결

Default judgment is a binding judgment in favor of either party based on some failure to take action by the other party. Most often, it is a judgment in favor of a plaintiff when the defendant has not file an answer to a complaints or has failed to appear before a court of law. The failure to take action is the default. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure provides that the court may enter default judgment against defendant if he fails to file an answer to complaints. Usually, this does not even involve a hearing. In such cases, obtaining Judgment is a purely administrative act, which is one refers to it as ‘entering’ Judgment. Final judgment will be entered in claims for specified sums, whereas Judgment for damages to be decided will be entered in claims for unspecified amounts. Because in most cases entering default judgment is an administrative process, there is no investigation of the merits of the claim. The court, therefore retains wide powers to set aside on a motion by the defendant This article looks over Judgment in default mainly focusing on the federal rule of civil procedure. If needed, reference from state system will be alluded. In the following paragraphs topics on default Judgment will be tackled on. Topics are on the meaning, the history, the grounds, the process, the method, and relief of a default Judgment. Furthermore, the problems behind them will be pointed out and ways to improve these problems will be suggested. This discussion is meaningful for it presents implications that could be applied to the development of non-pleading Judgment system of Korea.