When the first paper you receive is a motion, not a complaint.

If the first paper you received is a motion for summary judgment instead of a complaint, the plaintiff is using CPLR 3213. That rule is available only on an instrument for the payment of money only, or on a judgment. There is no complaint, no answer, and no discovery as of right. Your response date is already running.

What is a motion for summary judgment in lieu of a complaint?

A motion for summary judgment in lieu of a complaint is New York’s accelerated collection procedure under CPLR 3213. The plaintiff serves a summons together with a fully briefed summary judgment motion and no complaint at all. The court decides liability and amount on that single set of papers. Pleadings and discovery are skipped entirely.

The rule exists because some claims are documentary. A signed promise to pay a fixed sum on a fixed date does not need a trial to interpret. The Legislature decided a formal complaint adds nothing when the document does all the work.

The consequence is structural. You are not being asked to plead. You are being asked to lose, now, on papers. This proceeding opens where an ordinary lawsuit arrives only after pleadings and disclosure are done.

Law: CPLR 3213.

What kinds of documents let a plaintiff skip the complaint?

CPLR 3213 reaches two things and nothing else. The first is an instrument for the payment of money only. The second is a judgment. A document is an instrument for the payment of money only when the instrument itself, plus proof that you did not pay, makes out the entire case.

The Court of Appeals stated the test directly. A document qualifies if a prima facie case would be made out by the instrument and a failure to make the payments called for by its terms. The instrument does not qualify if outside proof is needed, other than simple proof of nonpayment or a similar de minimis deviation from the face of the document.

Apply that test and most of the argument disappears. The question is not whether you owe money. The question is whether a judge can read the document, add nothing to it, and know what you owe.

Law: CPLR 3213; Weissman v. Sinorm Deli, Inc., 88 N.Y.2d 437 (1996); Cooperatieve Centrale Raiffeisen-Boerenleenbank, B.A. v. Navarro, 25 N.Y.3d 485 (2015); Interman Indus. Prods., Ltd. v. R.S.M. Electron Power, Inc., 37 N.Y.2d 151 (1975); Alessina v. El Gauchito II, Corp., 220 A.D.3d 645 (2d Dep’t 2023); Pearl Riv. Campus, LLC v. ReadyScrip, LLC, 2025 NY Slip Op 04101 (2d Dep’t 2025).

How long do I have to respond, and which date controls?

Your deadline is the time stated in the notice of motion, and it can fall before the return date. It is not the twenty days you may have heard about for serving an answer. CPLR 3213 requires the return date to be no earlier than the CPLR 320(a) appearance time, which depends on how you were served.

The plaintiff may set the hearing date later than the statutory minimum. If it does, it may require your answering papers up to ten days before that date. Read the notice of motion, because that requirement moves your real deadline earlier than the return date.

One protection is written into the statute. No default judgment may be entered under CPLR 3215(a) before the hearing date of the motion. To be clear, that is not an extension.

A narrower rule applies where the claim is a consumer debt. In an action to collect a debt arising out of a consumer credit transaction, CPLR 3212(j) requires an additional notice where the consumer defendant is not represented by an attorney. It carries a floor. Summary judgment cannot be entered on your failure to oppose until at least fourteen days have run from the clerk’s mailing, or nineteen if the notice of motion demands additional time under CPLR 2214(b).

Law: CPLR 3213; CPLR 320(a); CPLR 308(2), (4); CPLR 3212(j).

Do I get discovery, an answer, or a second chance to submit proof?

No. A CPLR 3213 motion gives you one set of opposing papers and no discovery as of right. You are required to set out every defense on the merits and to lay bare your evidentiary proof supporting those defenses in that single submission. A cross motion attacking service earns you no automatic extension to address the merits later.

That last point is where defendants lose cases they should win. A defendant who challenges service and holds back the merits gets no second round after the service challenge fails. There is no automatic extension of the kind CPLR 3211(f) gives on an ordinary dismissal motion.

Two related traps sit alongside it. A jurisdictional objection must be raised in the papers you serve, because an appearance is equivalent to personal service of the summons unless the objection under CPLR 3211(a)(8) is asserted as rule 3211 provides. And a counterclaim must be related to, and intertwined with, the instrument sued upon before it bears on the motion.

The one lever that survives is CPLR 3212(f). If facts essential to justify your opposition exist but cannot yet be stated, the court may deny the motion or order a continuance for disclosure. That relief is discretionary, and it requires a sworn showing of what the facts are and why they sit in the plaintiff’s hands. A general request for discovery will not carry it.

You get one submission. Everything you intend to prove has to be inside it.

Law: CPLR 3212(f); CPLR 320(b); CPLR 3211(e); Alfred E. Mann Living Trust v. ETIRC Aviation S.A.R.L., 78 A.D.3d 137 (1st Dep’t 2010); Singotiko v. Kenealy, 89 A.D.3d 917 (2d Dep’t 2011).

How do I raise a triable issue of fact and defeat the motion?

You defeat a CPLR 3213 motion in one of two ways. Either the document sued upon is not an instrument for the payment of money only, or your papers raise a triable issue of fact. Raising a triable issue of fact requires evidentiary proof in admissible form, which in practice means a sworn affidavit from a person with personal knowledge.

A triable issue of fact means the two sides swear to competing versions of something that matters, and a judge cannot choose between them on paper. Mere conclusions, expressions of hope, and unsubstantiated allegations or assertions are insufficient. An attorney’s affirmation from someone who was not there is not evidence.

The threshold attack is usually the stronger one. It does not require you to prove anything, only the plaintiff’s own exhibits to fall short. These are openings appellate courts have credited:

• The amount cannot be read off the document. Where a guaranty referenced a deposit figure different from the sum demanded, and did not establish the date the repayment obligation was triggered, the motion was denied.
• The obligation is measured by a different document. Where a guaranty of a lease required the court to examine material outside the lease and to make calculations the moving affidavit never showed, relief under CPLR 3213 was unavailable.
• The promise is contingent rather than absolute. An indemnification agreement reaching unknown future liabilities is not an instrument for the payment of money only, because outside evidence is needed to establish what is owed.
• Nothing bears your signature. An account stated, unsupported by any written document subscribed by the party to be charged, falls outside CPLR 3213 entirely.
• The instrument demands performance, not only payment. Where the instrument requires something in addition to an explicit promise to pay a sum of money, CPLR 3213 is unavailable.

Each is a defect in the plaintiff’s chosen procedure, not a denial of the debt. A defendant with no factual dispute at all may still defeat the motion.

The strongest opposition is often not “I do not owe this.” It is “the court cannot tell from this document what I owe.”

Law: Zuckerman v. City of New York, 49 N.Y.2d 557 (1980); Weissman, 88 N.Y.2d 437; Interman, 37 N.Y.2d 151; Kitchen Winners NY, Inc. v. Triptow, 226 A.D.3d 989 (2d Dep’t 2024); Pearl Riv. Campus, 2025 NY Slip Op 04101.

What happens if the court denies the motion?

If the court denies a CPLR 3213 motion, the moving and answering papers are deemed the complaint and the answer, and the case proceeds as an ordinary action with discovery. The statute adds five words to that rule: unless the court orders otherwise. The Court of Appeals has read those words to include the power to dismiss the action outright.

The Second Department applied the conversion rule in exactly this posture in 2024. It struck the provision granting summary judgment in lieu of complaint, substituted a denial, and deemed the motion and answering papers to be the complaint and answer. The plaintiff kept its case. It lost the shortcut.

That is what a defense win looks like here. Denial does not usually end the lawsuit. It converts a proceeding built to produce a judgment on one round of papers into ordinary litigation, with disclosure and time. Where the claim never fit the procedure at all, the action can be dismissed instead. That is within the court’s discretion, not something you are entitled to.

If the motion is granted, a money judgment is entered against you and the plaintiff turns to enforcement under CPLR article 52. That is a separate fight under separate rules.

Law: CPLR 3213; Schulz v. Barrows, 94 N.Y.2d 624 (2000); Kitchen Winners, 226 A.D.3d 989.

What should you do first?

Treat a CPLR 3213 motion as a decision date, not a lawsuit you will get around to. The record closes when your opposition is served, and what you leave out does not come back later. Three things need to happen before anything else, and they need to happen in this order.

1. Find the instrument and everything it points to. Pull the exhibit the plaintiff attached: the promissory note, the guaranty, or the settlement agreement. Then pull every document it names, such as the loan agreement or the lease. Referenced documents are where threshold defects live.
2. Calculate the date from the affidavit of service. Read the time to respond stated in the notice of motion. Read the affidavit of service for the method of service and the date service was complete. The two together, not the return date alone, give you your real deadline.
3. Answer one question before any other. Can the exact sum demanded be computed from the four corners of the instrument, using nothing but proof that you did not pay? If the answer is no, the plaintiff has chosen a procedure the claim does not fit, and the motion fails on that ground alone.

Then assemble the proof. Any factual defense needs a sworn affidavit from a person with firsthand knowledge, attaching the documents that support it. Payment records, correspondence regarding the alleged default, and the signature page all belong in that submission, not a later one.

Do not wait for a complaint to arrive. In this proceeding, no complaint is coming. The motion is the case.