Amazon Sellers: How To Fight Back After You Get Sued
All right Amazon sellers. There’s a brand called WubbaNub, they hired lawyers & they’re suing Amazon sellers in the southern district of New York, the federal courthouse in Manhattan.
They’re making a lot of claims against Amazon sellers and we’re getting calls, I’d probably say about a half a dozen a week for sellers just like you who’ve been sued and they don’t know what to do.
Well, there are a couple of things you should do as soon as you get sued.
If you get sued and you receive what’s called a complaint, that’s the document with all the allegations against you. That’s the document that starts a lawsuit. But many Amazon sellers, you’re not finding out about the litigation until you find out that there’s something called a TRO. It stands for temporary restraining order. It’s an order issued by a judge, and it usually freezes your assets, your Amazon account, your money, your inventory.
So what do you do if you get a TRO?
Well, the first thing you should consider doing is making a motion to the court to dissolve it, to take it away. You can argue that the court has no power over you. It lacks jurisdiction. Jurisdiction is just a fancy term for the court having power over you. In order for a court in New York, federal or state, to have power over you, you have to have done something in New York, delivered some products to New York, in order to subject yourself to the court’s jurisdiction. If you didn’t do anything to subject yourself / business to the courts in New York, for example, you ask them to dissolve the TRO because the court lacks jurisdiction over you. You could also ask the court to throw the entire case out.
You can also ask the court to dissolve the temporary restraining order against you because of percentages. Many of these orders will freeze 100% of your business, 100% of your assets, 100% of your inventory, even though the products in the lawsuit are only maybe 3% or 5% or 10%. But 100% of your business is being stopped because of an allegation regarding a small portion of your sales. We use this argument over and over again to persuade judges to release your assets because the order itself overreaches the litigation and the complaints. Because these complaints are for one brand, the TROs are for one brand, and you are selling many.
So this is a brief summary of some of the issues that Amazon sellers are facing.
You get sued, a TRO gets imposed against you, everything gets frozen, and you need to know how to ask the court to dissolve the restraining order so you can get back into business and then fight the case if the court has power over you.
If you want to learn more about how me and my insanely awesome team represent Amazon sellers all over the country and world, contact me. We’ll get on a call and talk about the issues that you’re facing, and more importantly, how to resolve the issues that you’re facing as quickly, efficiently, and cost-effectively as possible if you get sued.
CALL 1-877-9-SELLER FOR A FREE CONSULTATION