A federal judge in Manhattan has 60 days to get the long-running Keurig Green Mountain antitrust case moving forward before a federal appeals court will reconsider whether to step in to the litigation, according to a Tuesday court order.
The New York-based 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in an order declined a bid from a plaintiffs’ lawyer suing Keurig over alleged anticompetitive conduct in the single-cup coffee brewing market to compel US District Judge Vernon Broderick to set a trial date in the nearly 9-year-old case.
But the three-judge panel said it would weigh a renewed request if Broderick within the next two months “fails to take action on the pending motions.”
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Those requests include Keurig and plaintiffs’ lawyers arguing that the court could rule just based on the factual record in the pleadings.
Family-owned coffee products company JBR Inc in California and food and beverage company TreeHouse Foods Inc in Illinois are among the plaintiffs suing Keurig, which has denied the claims. The plaintiffs have warned about further delay in the case.
