California, United States of America
The following excerpt is from Nguyen v. Hua, G048742 (Cal. App. 2014):
"'"[T]he provisions of section 473 of the Code of Civil Procedure are to be liberally construed and sound policy favors the determination of actions on their merits." [Citation.]' [Citation.] '[B]ecause the law strongly favors trial and disposition on the merits, any doubts in applying section 473 must be resolved in favor of the party seeking relief from default.' [Citation.]" (Maynard v. Brandon (2005) 36 Cal.4th 364, 371-372.) Here, given the confusion, the complexity of the case due to the number of individual defendants, the multiple attempts at entering default, and plaintiffs' propria persona status, we find any lapse on counsel's part was indeed excusable, if such a lapse even
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