LEGAL INSIGHT

Q. A former business partner of mine sued me last year for money that he claimed I owed him. I do not owe him anything. I, however, really could not afford an attorney, so I responded to his lawsuit on my own with the hope that my former business partner would get the message that I would not be paying him anything. The case has been dormant in that my ex partner has done absolutely nothing since filing his complaint—which is fine with me. I have now received something called a Notice of Lack of Prosecution from the court. What is that and do I have to do anything?

A. The notice that you refer to is the court’s wake up call, for lack of a better term, to your former business partner that he needs to do something to move the case that he voluntarily brought forward. Under Florida law, if a case has been pending for at least 10 months with no record activity, then the opposing party or the court, on its own initiative, can file and serve a Notice of Lack of Prosecution. The party who filed the lawsuit has 60 days to either engage in some kind of record activity like serving written discovering requests, noticing a deposition or filing and serving a motion. If he fails to do so or fails to show good cause why the case should not be dismissed, the court can dismiss his case after the expiration of that 60-day period. As such, it sounds like you might want to simply sit tight at this point and wait to see if you former partner does anything.