Chicago Tile Institute Welfare Plan et al v. Central Tile Services, Co.

Filing 9

MEMORANDUM Order Signed by the Honorable Milton I. Shadur on 10/22/2012:Mailed notice(srn, )

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS
EASTERN DIVISION
CHICAGO TILE INSTITUTE WELFARE
PLAN, et al.,
Plaintiffs,
v.
CENTRAL TILE SERVICES CO.,
et al., etc.,
Defendants.

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No.

12 C 7325

MEMORANDUM ORDER
In this ERISA action brought by three employee benefit
funds, this Court has received two one-page handprinted
documents:

one labeled “Answer” and the other on a printed form

captioned “Proof of Service.”

This memorandum order is issued

sua sponte to strike the totally unsatisfactory Answer.
Two defendants are named in the Complaint:

dissolved

corporation Central Tile Services Co. (“Central Tile”) and
Christopher Jones (“Jones”), the latter assertedly sued because
he is now doing business in the name of that dissolved
corporation.

To begin with, the purported Answer is unsigned,

though it appears from the Proof of Service form that it was
prepared by one “Annemarie Jones”--and of course Ms. Jones is
obviously not Christopher Jones, and it is equally obvious that
she is not a lawyer.

As a matter of law a corporation cannot

represent itself--it must appear in court through a lawyer1--and
although Christopher Jones may choose to represent himself rather
than through a lawyer, Annemarie Jones is not authorized to
represent him either.
There are a number of substantive defects in the purported
Answer as well.
1.

Here they are:

Under Fed. R. Civ. P. (“Rule”) 8(b)(1)(B) a

defendant must either admit or deny each of the plaintiffs’
allegations.
2.

That has not been done here.

This District Court’s LR 10.1 requires every answer

to be self-contained, in the sense that the nature of each
allegation of the complaint must be stated before the answer
to that allegation is set out:
Responsive pleadings shall be made in numbered
paragraphs each corresponding to and stating a
concise summary of the paragraph to which it is
directed.
For defendants’ information, most lawyers comply with that
requirement by copying each paragraph of the complaint and
following that with the answer to that paragraph.
As stated earlier, the present Answer is stricken, and
defendants are ordered to file an Amended Answer on or before

1

Because a corporation can be sued post-dissolution under
some circumstances, that would appear to apply to the corporate
defendant here. That however must be checked with a lawyer, for
this Court cannot provide legal advice to the litigants before
it.
2

November 2, 2012.

If they fail to do so, plaintiffs may seek to

obtain an order of default.

Lastly, defendants are reminded that

an initial status hearing has been set by this Court for 9 a.m.
January 9, 2013.

________________________________________
Milton I. Shadur
Senior United States District Judge
Date:

October 22, 2012

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