Schedule A Litigation — Plaintiffs and Defendants
If you sell products on Amazon, Temu, or other online marketplaces, you may already know what a Schedule A lawsuit is. If you do not, here is the version you need to understand.
A plaintiff files a single lawsuit in the Northern District of Illinois against dozens or hundreds of online sellers, identified not by name in the caption but by a schedule attached to the complaint. The plaintiff immediately seeks an emergency temporary restraining order, asking the court to freeze the defendants' marketplace accounts and funds before those defendants even know a lawsuit exists. Most defendants, facing frozen accounts and no income from their marketplace stores, settle quickly for whatever amount will make the problem go away. That is the model, and it has been used aggressively — sometimes to vindicate legitimate intellectual property rights, and sometimes as a volume settlement business with thin evidence behind it.
Jonathan Phillips handles Schedule A cases on both sides. He filed his most recent blog article on exactly this topic: courts in 2026 are pushing back hard on abusive Schedule A filings, imposing sanctions on firms that judge-shop, ordering plaintiffs to compensate defendants whose accounts were improperly frozen, and refusing to let plaintiffs hide their defendant-selection process behind claims of privilege. If you want to understand where this area of law stands right now, that article is worth reading.
For Rights Holders
Online counterfeiting is a serious problem. Counterfeit goods appearing alongside authentic products on marketplace storefronts damage brands, confuse consumers, and undermine the value of intellectual property that took years and significant investment to build. The Schedule A mechanism, when used properly, is an effective tool for getting fast relief — account freezes, asset restraints, and injunctions — against sellers who are operating outside any legitimate channel and who would simply disappear if given notice before the TRO was entered.
Jonathan files these cases for clients with real infringement problems and real evidence. He knows what judges in the Northern District of Illinois expect, he knows which filings attract scrutiny, and he knows how to build a case that holds up when defendants push back. He is also a proponent of electronic service of process, which remains an important and underutilized efficiency in these cases. He works with Chinese co-counsel and is set up to handle the practical realities of pursuing defendants operating through PRC-based storefronts.
His rate of filing and his knowledge of the Northern District comes from handling these cases regularly — including the defense side — which means he understands the full picture in a way that firms doing only plaintiff-side work do not.
For Defendants
If your marketplace account has been frozen and you have been served with a Schedule A complaint, the situation is urgent but not hopeless. The leverage in these cases has shifted meaningfully in 2026. Courts are scrutinizing joinder, questioning the evidentiary basis for TROs, and in at least one significant recent case, ordering a plaintiff to compensate defendants for the harm an improperly obtained asset freeze caused.
Many Schedule A defendants have real defenses. Some were misidentified. Some sell legitimate products and were swept into a complaint targeting bad actors they have nothing to do with. Some are facing plaintiffs whose own evidence does not withstand examination. The fact that most defendants settle quickly does not mean settlement is always right — it means most defendants did not have counsel who understood what was actually happening and what options existed.
Jonathan represents Schedule A defendants in the Northern District of Illinois and in other jurisdictions where these cases have begun to migrate. He knows the plaintiff-side playbook because he uses it. That makes him a more effective advocate for defendants than someone who has only ever been on one side of these cases.