Lost on a Technicality? Ga. Appellate Court Weighs Impact of E-filing Error ona Default Judgment

“Not to be glib with Scripture, but let he who has never attached the wrong PDF to an e-mail cast the first stone,” defendant-appellant attorney, Miles Skedsvold, of Robbins Alloy Belinfante Littlefield, said during oral arguments this week.

October 23, 2025 at 10:35 AM

Attorneys have increasingly had to navigate technological hiccups, particularly with nonexistentcase citations on artificial intelligence platforms, but litigators in Georgia are now challenging adifferent kind of glitch with how case documents are dated on e-filing platforms.

On Wednesday, the Georgia Court of Appeals heard a request to vacate a default judgment issuedby Fulton County Superior Court Judge Melynee Leftridge after defendant Piksel America, a pixelart app, purportedly failed to file a timely response to a complaint filed by Piksell Inc. alleging the defendant failed to pay a promissory note on a stock purchase. It was up to an appellate team from Robbins Alloy Belinfante Littlefield to convince the intermediate appellate court that their client shouldn’t be punished for their trial counsel’s underlying mistakes.

Defendant-appellant counsel, Miles Skedsvold of Robbins Alloy Belinfante Littlefield, told the state intermediate court the delay resulted from a clerical mistake on the part of Piksel America’s trialattorney. While he said his firm wasn’t involved with the trial court litigation, his best guess is that trial counsel tried to submit a response, but instead of attaching everything as one document, the attorney turned in the answer with a separate batch of exhibits. As a result, even though thedefendant filed an answer in Fulton County’s online case management system by the deadline, it wasn’t listed in the docket until several days later, and Leftfridge found the company in default. Piksel America now appeals the case, captioned Piksel America v. Piksel, arguing the punishment does not fit the crime.

“Not to be glib with Scripture, but let he who has never attached the wrong PDF to an e-mail cast the first stone,” Skedsvold said.

At oral argument, Judge Kenneth Hodges wanted to know whether it mattered that the FultonCounty Superior Court clerk rejected Piksel America’s initial answer.

“I don’t think so,” replied Elizabeth Rose of Caiola & Rose, arguing for the plaintiff-appellee .”Nowhere in the affidavit was there any kind of statement that said that the answer was actually submitted to the clerk. So even with this backdrop, appellants have attempted to recast the facts to support a version of events that just isn’t borne out by the evidence.”

According to Rose, this wasn’t the first time the defendant-appellant missed the deadline to file ananswer in the underlying case, and Piksel America had also failed to pay filing fees, resulting in further delays. In short, this wasn’t an issue of technical error but neglect, she said.

Presiding Judge Brian Rickman honed in on this point when questioning the appellant.

“You were given multiple extensions and still didn’t file it within the granted extensions,” Rickmansaid to Skedsvold.

“So that’s right, [but] I don’t think it plays into the proper case analysis because, as you say, those extensions were granted,” Skedsvold replied. “But you’ve put your finger on what I think is the root of this case … and this is why I keep emphasizing that default judgment is a drastic sanction that should be invoked only in extreme circumstances. I’m fully willing to acknowledge that our trial counsel did not do everything that he was supposed to do, and the things that he was supposed to do, he did not always do appropriately. But because this is such a drastic sanction that penalizes parties, not the lawyers, the system builds in chance after chance after chance to avoid that sanction.”

However, Rickman also appeared open to hearing the defendant-appellant out.

“This is a broader point aside from this case, I get it, but you won’t go to a statute or a uniform court rule and find a rule that says all exhibits must be filed with leading documents,” Rickman told Rose.

“I think the issue here for this court is that there is a cure for when there is a technical default,when there is something where you made a mistake,” Rose replied. “There is a cure for that, and that didn’t happen.”

Counsel for the defendant-appellants also included Vincent Russo and Edward Bedard of Robbins Alloy Belinfante Littlefield. Counsel for the plaintiff-appellees also included Lindsay Henner of Caiola & Rose.