The Pro Se Complaint With No Fee and No Summonses
It is Monday, March 10, 2025, and you are the intake clerk in a civil division. On Friday, March 7, the court received by mail a 9-page complaint from a self-represented plaintiff naming two defendants. The envelope contained no filing fee, no fee waiver application, and no summonses. The complaint's certificate of service states that the plaintiff mailed a copy of the complaint to both defendants on March 3, 2025. The local rules provide: (a) the clerk must not refuse a document for filing because a fee is missing; the clerk files it, assigns a case number, and issues a written deficiency notice listing each defect and giving 14 days from the date of the notice to cure; (b) the clerk will not issue or serve process until summonses are presented; (c) a defendant's response is due 20 days after service, and where service is by mail, 3 days are added to the end of the period after any weekend or holiday roll-over has been applied; time is computed by excluding the day of the event and counting every day, and if the last day is a weekend or court holiday the period runs to the next business day. No court holidays fall in the relevant weeks.
1. Draft the deficiency notice. Compute and state the cure date.
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IN THE [COUNTY] DISTRICT COURT, CIVIL DIVISION Solis v. Barrett and Delta Property Management, Case No. CV-25-0473
NOTICE OF DEFICIENCY
Your complaint was received and filed on March 7, 2025. The clerk's office has identified the following deficiencies:
- The filing fee was not paid and no application to proceed without payment of fees was included. Submit the fee or the completed application.
- No summonses were presented. The clerk will not issue or serve process until summonses are presented.
- The certificate of service states that copies were mailed to the defendants on March 3, 2025, before the complaint was filed on March 7, 2025.
You have 14 days from the date of this notice, that is, until March 24, 2025, to cure these items. If they are not cured, the court may take the action the rules allow. This notice is not a ruling on the merits of your case and the clerk cannot give you legal advice.
Dated: March 10, 2025 - [signature block], Deputy Clerk
Computation: exclude March 10; day 1 is March 11; day 14 is March 24, a Monday, so no roll-over is needed.
2. For a staff training exercise, compute the earliest date a defendant's response would be due if the plaintiff later serves both defendants by mail on Monday, April 7, 2025.
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Apply the rule in the order it is written: 20 days, roll-over, then add 3.
- Exclude the day of service, April 7. Day 1 is April 8.
- Day 20 is April 27, 2025, which is a Sunday.
- Roll to the next business day: Monday, April 28.
- Add the 3 mail days: April 29, 30, May 1, 2025 - a Thursday, not a holiday.
So the earliest response date is May 1, 2025.
Two errors to avoid in training: adding the 3 mail days to April 27 and stopping at April 30 (the roll-over comes first under this rule), and counting April 7 as day 1, which shortens the period by a day. Also flag the limit of the exercise: this is a computation, not advice, and the clerk does not tell a party what the deadline is. If a defendant raises a timeliness issue, the judge decides it.
3. The certificate of service bothers you. Explain why the complaint is still filed, and what the notice should and should not say about service.
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File it. Rule (a) forbids refusing a document for a missing fee, and the same logic covers the other defects: the clerk's job is to open the record and describe the problem, not to gatekeep. Refusing or returning the papers would leave the plaintiff with no case number, no way to cure, and no record that anything was ever submitted - and the filing date would be lost.
What the notice should say: the facts as they appear in the document - that the certificate shows a mailing date earlier than the filing date - and the rule requirement that process be issued after filing and served with summonses. What it must not say: that service "is invalid," that the case "will be dismissed," or how the plaintiff should fix it. Validity of service is decided by the judge, usually on a defendant's motion; dismissal is a judicial act. And the clerk may not coach a self-represented party through the elements of service.
The neutral middle ground: state the rule text, point to the court's self-help materials and the clerk's public forms list, and log the contact. Record what you told the plaintiff, because the next conversation may be with a supervisor or a judge.