Your Store Was Frozen in a Schedule A Case. What to Do This Week.

The call usually starts the same way. A seller forwards us an email from Amazon, Walmart or Temu saying the store's balance is on hold because of a court order in the Northern District of Illinois. The seller has never heard of the plaintiff, never been served with anything, and wants to know whether this is a scam.

It usually is not. In a Schedule A case, a brand owner sues dozens or hundreds of online stores in one complaint and lists them on a sealed attachment called "Schedule A." The court is asked for a temporary restraining order on an ex parte basis, meaning without hearing from the sellers, and the order directs the marketplaces to freeze the defendants' accounts. By the time you see the case, the freeze is already in place.

Here is how we work through the first week with a new client.

Day one: find the case and read it

The marketplace notice normally gives the case number, something like 1:26-cv-01234. Pull the docket and read three documents: the complaint, the TRO, and Schedule A itself once it is unsealed. You want to know which right is asserted (trademark, copyright or design patent), which of your listings are accused, and which judge has the case. Our ILND case list is a quick way to check whether the case number is real.

Then take stock of the freeze on every platform, not just the one that emailed you. Write down each store, the amount held and when it was frozen. That number drives almost every decision that follows.

Day two: preserve, don't delete

The instinct to take down the accused listings is understandable. Do not delete anything. Once you know about a lawsuit you have a duty to preserve relevant evidence, and a missing listing looks worse than a bad one. Screenshot the listings as they stand, export sales data for the accused products (including any orders shipped to Illinois, which bear on jurisdiction), and gather supplier invoices or design files that show where the product came from. Deactivating a listing so it stops selling is a different matter from deleting it, and we can advise on that.

Days three to five: decide on a direction

A TRO lasts 14 days unless the court extends it (Fed. R. Civ. P. 65(b)(2)), and plaintiffs move quickly for a preliminary injunction to keep the freeze in place. Service is usually by email under a court order (Fed. R. Civ. P. 4(f)(3)), and the answer deadline is 21 days from service (Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(a)). Missing it invites a default judgment, and defaults in these cases routinely end with the frozen funds transferred to the plaintiff.

The realistic options are to negotiate a settlement, to ask the court to narrow the freeze to what your accused sales actually earned, to challenge how the case was brought, or to defend on the merits. Which one makes sense depends on how strong the claim is against your particular product and how much is frozen. A seller with $800 held over a listing that plainly used the brand's logo is in a different position from a seller with $60,000 held over a phone case that says "compatible with."

The court is paying closer attention

For years these cases ran on autopilot. That is changing. In Eicher Motors Ltd. v. The Partnerships and Unincorporated Associations Identified on Schedule "A", No. 25-cv-02937 (N.D. Ill. Aug. 8, 2025), Judge Kness denied an ex parte TRO and questioned the district's routine asset freezes. Other judges now require plaintiffs to justify joining unrelated sellers in one case, and courts outside Illinois have issued standing orders limiting the practice. None of this helps a seller who does not respond, but it gives sellers who do respond more room to push back.

What not to do

Do not write to the plaintiff's lawyers yourself. Sellers often explain, apologize or offer a number, and all of it ends up in the negotiation file. Do not open a new store to keep selling the same product. And do not assume a small freeze means the case will go away on its own.

If your store is frozen now, send us the case number and the amounts held on each platform. That is enough for us to tell you where you stand.