Clinton pushes back on default in wrongful death suit

Lawyers for Hillary Clinton are pushing back on a court entry declaring her in default in a wrongful death suit brought by the parents of two of the men killed during the 2012 attacks on the American outpost in Benghazi, Libya.

{mosads}The Democratic presidential nominee was declared in default by the court clerk Friday — a designation that simply means she was served with court documents and that she did not answer the complaint. It is not a finding of liability.

Clinton’s lawyers urged District Judge Royce Lamberth to vacate the default in a filing Thursday, arguing that the plaintiffs’ request for the entry was erroneous.

According to the filing, Clinton was never effectively served with a summons and complaint in the case.

The documents were delivered to an unidentified security guard in the building where Clinton’s campaign office is located, but “neither Secretary Clinton nor her counsel were aware that a security guard had accepted copies of the complaint and summons addressed to Secretary Clinton until Plaintiffs filed their motion for entry of default.”

Clinton’s lawyers also argued that because she is being sued for actions she took as secretary of State, the plaintiffs in the case should have served the U.S. government, not Clinton personally.

“Plaintiffs’ request for entry of default was an improper publicity stunt, and this Court should vacate the entry of default,” Clinton’s lawyers wrote.

Clinton aides have contacted the State Department to request that the U.S. government provide representation in the matter and believe that it is “under consideration,” according to the filing.

Patricia Smith and Charles Woods claim in the suit against Clinton that the attacks that killed their sons, Sean Smith and Tyrone Woods, as well as two other Americans, were “directly and proximately caused, at a minimum” by Clinton’s use of a private email server while in office.

“As a direct result of Defendant Clinton’s reckless handling of this classified, sensitive information, Islamic terrorists were able to obtain the whereabouts of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and thus the U.S. State Department and covert and other government operations in Benghazi, Libya and subsequently orchestrate, plan, and execute the now infamous September 11, 2012 attack,” according to the suit.

Clinton lawyers also took aim at the conservative lawyer and longtime Clinton nemesis Larry Klayman, who brought the suit on behalf of Smith and Woods.

“Mr. Klayman is an active litigant who repeatedly brings meritless lawsuits against public officials. This is at least the eighteenth time that Mr. Klayman has sued former Secretary Clinton or former President Clinton. Nearly all of those lawsuits failed before or upon a motion to dismiss, and Mr. Klayman has not prevailed on the merits on a single claim over his decades-long history of suing the Clintons,” they wrote.