149 Iowa 246 | Iowa | 1910
Within four days after the service of notice on defendant’s agent, some one in the legal department at defendant’s general offices in Minneapolis requested Mr. Scales, the attorney who had for a number of years been the local representative of the defendant company in Hardin County, to forward to the general attorney of defendant a copy of the petition, and this copy reached the office of the general attorney on January 7th. On the second day afterward an answer drawn, by Mr. Phelps, an attorney in the office of the general attorney of defendant, was mailed by him to Mr. Scales for filing in the clerk’s office in Hardin County. Had this answer reached its destination in due course of mail, it would in the usual course of business have been filed by Mr. Scales with the clerk on the
The setting aside of a default is a matter in which the trial court is vested with a very considerable discretion, and its action in affording an opportunity for a trial on the merits has been sustained wherever there was a reasonable ground for doing so; but it has always been held more strictly to account where it has overruled a motion to set aside a default denying an opportunity for a trial on the merits. Barto v. Sioux City El. Co., 119 Iowa, 179; Klepfer v. Keokuk, 126 Iowa, 595; Douglas v. Badger State Mine, 41 Wash. 266 (83 Pac. 178, 4 L. R. A. [N. S.] 196).
We reach the conclusion that under the record the trial court was not justified in overruling the motion to set aside the default, and its order is reversed.