Treehouse Foods, Inc. v. Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Inc.
- Vernon Broderick
- 1:14-cv-00905
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Treehouse Foods v. Green Mountain, Judge Broderick denied Plaintiffs’ request to set a trial date before deciding pending summary-judgment motions.
The plaintiffs requesting a trial date—TreeHouse Foods, Inc., Bay Valley Foods, LLC, Sturm Foods, Inc., JBR, Inc. doing business as Rogers Family Company, McLane Company, Inc., and Direct Purchaser Plaintiffs—and Defendant Keurig.
What happened
Treehouse Foods, Inc. and other plaintiffs asked the court to set a date for a jury trial in the Keurig Green Mountain single-serve coffee antitrust litigation. Defendant Keurig opposed the request.
The court noted that Plaintiffs had not withdrawn their summary-judgment motions and that Defendant wanted its own summary-judgment motion decided. The court said those motions could resolve some legal issues and help narrow the factual issues for trial.
Judge Vernon S. Broderick denied Plaintiffs’ request for a trial date. He said that setting a date before resolving the pending motions would be imprudent and inefficient, but stated that he could ask the parties to propose trial dates later if necessary.
The detailed version
- Treehouse Foods, Inc. v. Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Inc. · No. 1:14-cv-00905
- Vernon Broderick
- May 16, 2022
Background
Plaintiffs TreeHouse Foods, Inc., Bay Valley Foods, LLC, Sturm Foods, Inc., JBR, Inc. doing business as Rogers Family Company, McLane Company, Inc., and Direct Purchaser Plaintiffs requested that the court set a date for a jury trial. Defendant Keurig opposed the request.
The court noted that Plaintiffs did not appear to have withdrawn their pending motions for summary judgment, and that Defendant had expressed interest in having its own summary-judgment motion decided. Summary judgment is a procedure for deciding claims without a trial when the court determines that the relevant facts do not require a trial, or for narrowing the issues that remain for trial.
Court’s reasoning
The court stated that decisions on the pending pretrial motions could resolve some or all of the legal issues expected to be litigated at trial and could provide guidance about factual issues, narrowing the matters in dispute. Because of that, the court found that setting a trial date before resolving the pending summary-judgment motions would be imprudent and inefficient.
Ruling
Judge Vernon S. Broderick ordered that Plaintiffs’ request for a trial date is DENIED. The court stated that, if necessary after resolving the summary-judgment motions, it would ask the parties to meet and confer and provide possible trial dates.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.