How Fast Does a Schedule A Case Move? A Timeline for Sellers

The first question most sellers ask us is not whether they did anything wrong. It is how much time they have. The honest answer is less than you think, because a Schedule A case has usually been running for a while before the defendant hears about it.

Judges in the Northern District of Illinois manage their own calendars, and no two cases move at exactly the same pace. The overall shape is set by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, though, and it has been consistent in the cases we handle. Below is that shape, and where your options are.

The first stage happens without you

The brand owner files the complaint, asks the court to keep the list of defendants (Schedule A) under seal, and moves for a temporary restraining order. The TRO is requested ex parte, which means the judge hears only from the plaintiff. The sellers are not notified, because the point is to freeze their accounts before money can be moved.

Once the TRO is entered, it goes to Amazon, Walmart, Temu, eBay and the other platforms, and they freeze the listed stores. That freeze is usually the first sign a seller gets that a case exists. On the public dockets we follow on our case list, the TRO is most often entered within a week or two of filing. By the time you see the frozen balance, the plaintiff has been preparing for weeks and the court has already ruled once.

The TRO is short by design, and the injunction comes next

A TRO issued without notice expires after 14 days unless the court extends it for good cause (Fed. R. Civ. P. 65(b)(2)). Before it runs out, the plaintiff asks the court to convert it into a preliminary injunction, which keeps the freeze in place for the rest of the case. That pushes the injunction to roughly a month after filing, sometimes later when the TRO is extended or a hearing is moved.

That window matters most. Before the injunction is entered, a defendant can still ask the court to release money that has nothing to do with the accused product, or to limit the asset freeze to a realistic estimate of profits from the accused listings. A defendant can also object to being joined with unrelated stores. Those arguments can still be made after the injunction, but they are harder to win and take longer to resolve.

Your answer is due sooner than the docket suggests

Most Schedule A plaintiffs get permission to serve defendants by email and through the marketplace (Fed. R. Civ. P. 4(f)(3)). Once service is made, a defendant has 21 days to respond to the complaint (Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(a)(1)(A)(i)).

We regularly see sellers who believe they have not been served because nothing came by mail. If the court allowed electronic service and the plaintiff sent it, the 21 days are running. Check the docket for a certificate of service, and check your spam folder for anything from the plaintiff's firm.

Default follows when nobody responds

When a defendant does not respond, the plaintiff asks the clerk to enter default and then moves for default judgment (Fed. R. Civ. P. 55). In our experience this usually happens a few months into the case, once the deadlines for the non-responding stores have passed. A default judgment typically awards statutory damages and directs the platforms to transfer the frozen funds to the plaintiff.

Setting aside a default judgment is possible but much harder than responding on time. That is why we rarely treat "wait and see" as a free option, even when the frozen amount is small.

Settlement can happen at any point, but timing changes the price

In our experience, plaintiffs' firms send a settlement demand soon after the freeze. Early on, the plaintiff has spent little on your store and you have the most room to negotiate scope: which funds stay frozen, whether other stores are released, and what the dismissal says. As the injunction and default stages approach, offers tend to harden. We cover the trade-offs in Settle or fight a Schedule A case.

What this means if your store was frozen this week

Counting from the day you saw the frozen balance, the case usually looks like this:

• The case is already one to two weeks old, and the TRO is in place.
• The next two to three weeks are the window before the preliminary injunction, when narrowing the freeze is most realistic.
• Your response is due 21 days after service, which may already have happened by email.
• Default proceedings against stores that never responded typically start a few months after filing.

Look up the case number on our case list, write down the amount held on each platform, and read what to do in the first week. Then talk to a lawyer while the injunction is still pending, because that is when you have the most options.