How to handle default judgment in a Schedule A case on Amazon US

A federal court order can freeze an Amazon seller's funds before the seller ever sees the complaint. The payment account goes dark, the marketplace listings go down, and the first notice the seller receives is a restraining order naming them as a defendant. That is the opening sequence of a typical "Schedule A Defendants" case – and when the seller misses the response deadline, default judgment follows. Default is not an endpoint, but the window to undo it is narrower than most sellers realize.

TL;DRA default judgment in a Schedule A case is a federal court ruling entered against a seller who did not respond to the complaint in time. It can be challenged – but only through a motion to vacate under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, filed promptly and with a credible defense. The outcome of that motion, and whether a damages award and permanent injunction can be undone, turns on the quality of the filing and the speed of the response once the seller learns of the judgment.

This guide walks through what default judgment means in the Schedule A context, how it is entered, the step-by-step path to challenging it, where sellers go wrong when they try to handle it alone, and the decision points that determine whether vacatur is realistic. Each step builds on the previous one – the order below matters.

What does a default judgment in a Schedule A case actually mean for an Amazon seller?

A default judgment in a Schedule A case is a binding federal court ruling that the plaintiff's claims – usually trademark infringement under the Lanham Act – are deemed admitted because the defendant never appeared. It is not a settlement or a negotiated outcome. It is a unilateral determination of liability and damages, entered as a matter of procedure when no responsive pleading is filed.

In practice, the sequence on Amazon US looks like this. A rights owner or litigation funder files a complaint in a US federal court, typically in a venue known for issuing rapid ex parte relief, naming dozens or hundreds of anonymous sellers on a "Schedule A" attachment. Along with the complaint, they seek a temporary restraining order (TRO) and an asset freeze covering every payment account and marketplace balance tied to those sellers. Amazon receives a court order and locks the funds – often before any defendant is served. The seller's Seller Central account may show a payment hold with no explanation, or the account may be deactivated outright.

If the seller does not appear by the deadline – and many do not, because service by publication or electronic means is commonly authorized and easily missed – the plaintiff moves for entry of default. The clerk enters a default. The plaintiff then moves for default judgment. The court enters a damages figure, often based on the plaintiff's submission alone, and issues a permanent injunction against the seller. At that point, the frozen funds may be turned over to the plaintiff to satisfy the judgment.

In matters we handle, the gap between the TRO and the default judgment entry is usually a matter of weeks, not months. That timeline is short enough that a seller who discovers the case late may be confronting a final judgment rather than a live complaint. The critical question then shifts: is the judgment still vacatable?

Being named in a Schedule A case is not an automatic loss. Sellers who participated in the case have challenged jurisdiction, misjoinder, the underlying IP claims, and the damages calculation – with results ranging from dismissal to significantly reduced awards. The obstacle with default judgment is that none of those arguments were raised in time, so the path to raising them runs through a motion to vacate rather than a direct defense at trial.

How is default judgment entered, and how long does the seller have?

Default judgment in federal court follows a two-step procedural sequence: entry of default by the clerk, then entry of judgment by the court – and each step has its own motion practice.

After the response deadline passes without an appearance, the plaintiff files a motion or application for entry of default under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 55(a). The clerk enters the default as a ministerial act. The plaintiff then moves for default judgment under Rule 55(b). Where damages are not a sum certain, the court holds a prove-up hearing or accepts the plaintiff's affidavit. In Schedule A cases, courts frequently accept the plaintiff's damages submission on paper, without a hearing, so judgment can enter quickly.

There is no single statutory deadline to challenge a default judgment, but speed matters in two ways. First, a motion to set aside entry of default (before judgment enters) is evaluated under a more forgiving standard than a motion to vacate a final judgment. Second, once the court orders turnover of the frozen funds to the plaintiff, recovering those specific dollars becomes exponentially harder even if the judgment is later vacated. Delay compounds every problem.

For Rule 60(b) motions to vacate a final judgment, courts look at whether the motion was filed within a "reasonable time" – and for the three main grounds most relevant here (excusable neglect, a meritorious defense, and lack of prejudice to the plaintiff), the shorter the gap between learning of the judgment and filing, the better the posture. We regularly see sellers who lost weeks trying to resolve the account hold through Amazon Seller Central before realizing that a federal court order was behind it. Every one of those weeks counts.

Step 1 – Locate and read the actual court order

The first concrete step is identifying the case, the court, and what the orders actually say – which requires accessing the federal court's electronic filing system (PACER) and pulling the docket.

Start with what Amazon has sent. If there is a payment hold notice, it sometimes references the case name or docket number. More often it does not. The account health notice says only that a court order is in effect. In that situation, the seller (or counsel) searches PACER by the seller's legal name, business name, store name, and any ASIN mentioned in correspondence. Schedule A cases are frequently filed under placeholder names and later amended to add actual seller identities, so a name search may not surface the case immediately.

Once the docket is located, pull: the complaint, the TRO and asset-freeze order, the service documents, the entry of default, the motion for default judgment, and – if entered – the default judgment itself. Read the judgment carefully for four things: the damages figure and how it was calculated; the scope of the permanent injunction; whether a turnover order has been entered directing Amazon or a payment processor to transfer the held funds; and the date the judgment was entered. That date is the clock.

In our practice, sellers are sometimes unaware that a turnover order was entered weeks before they contacted us. Acting before the funds move is materially different from acting after. If the docket shows a pending turnover motion that has not yet been ruled on, emergency relief may be available to pause the transfer while a vacatur motion is briefed.

Step 2 – Assess the vacatur grounds

A motion to vacate a default judgment in a Schedule A case is almost always filed under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b), most commonly subsections (1) through (3) or (6).

The three practical questions for a Rule 60(b)(1) motion – the most commonly used ground after a missed deadline – are: Was the default the result of excusable neglect? Does the defendant have a meritorious defense? Would vacating the judgment prejudice the plaintiff? All three must point in the defendant's favor for the motion to succeed.

On excusable neglect: if the seller was served by publication in a foreign-language newspaper or by electronic posting on a court's notice website, and the seller had no actual knowledge of the case until the funds were frozen, that is a substantive argument. Courts in Schedule A cases have varied considerably on how much weight to give to constructive service alone. The argument is stronger when the seller can show they had no US registered agent, no English-language business correspondence going to a US address, and no prior litigation history in the jurisdiction.

On meritorious defense: this does not mean the defendant must prove they will win – it means they must assert a plausible defense. Common defenses in Schedule A cases include: authorized reseller status or first sale doctrine; the complaint's joinder of hundreds of unrelated sellers is improper and the court may lack personal jurisdiction over this particular seller; the plaintiff's trademark registration does not cover the specific goods at issue; or the damages figure is wildly disproportionate to any actual harm. A motion that simply says "I didn't know about the case" without articulating a defense fails this requirement.

On prejudice: the plaintiff will argue that vacating the judgment after they have already won disrupts their enforcement effort. Courts generally find this argument weak where funds have not yet been transferred, but stronger after a turnover order has been executed. Timing is directly connected to the prejudice analysis.

There are additional grounds under Rule 60(b)(3) (fraud or misrepresentation by the opposing party) and Rule 60(b)(4) (the judgment is void for lack of jurisdiction). Jurisdictional challenges – whether the court had personal jurisdiction over a foreign seller who sold into the US only through a marketplace – have been raised successfully in some Schedule A matters, though the case law is not uniform. This analysis requires reading the specific complaint and the court's prior rulings on similar challenges in the same action.

Step 3 – File the motion to vacate and the parallel filings

Once the grounds are identified, the motion package typically includes: the Rule 60(b) motion to vacate the default judgment, a supporting memorandum of law, a declaration from the seller addressing the facts on excusable neglect, and a proposed answer or other responsive pleading setting out the meritorious defense. The proposed answer matters – courts want to see that vacating the judgment would lead somewhere defensible, not simply restart the clock before a new default.

If a turnover order is pending or imminent, the motion should be accompanied by an emergency motion to stay the turnover pending resolution of the vacatur motion. That emergency filing needs to be made and served immediately, because the timeline for a funds transfer can be days, not weeks.

Service of the motion on the plaintiff's counsel triggers their response period. Plaintiffs in Schedule A cases are typically represented by aggressive IP litigation firms and will oppose the motion. The seller's declaration and the quality of the meritorious-defense argument are the two places where the motion is most often won or lost.

For sellers whose funds are still held by Amazon or a payment processor and have not been transferred, there may be a parallel avenue: a motion to modify or dissolve the asset freeze while the vacatur motion is pending, arguing that the continued hold serves no legitimate purpose once the defendant has appeared. For more on the mechanics of that motion, the firm's step-by-step guide to modifying an asset freeze covers the procedural requirements and what courts typically weigh.

After the motion is filed and fully briefed, the court will typically rule on the papers alone or schedule a hearing. Oral argument on a Rule 60(b) motion is discretionary; not all courts hold it. The seller and counsel should be prepared to respond to a request for supplemental briefing on jurisdictional issues, which courts in Schedule A cases sometimes request sua sponte.

Step 4 – Navigate the post-vacatur path

If the court grants the motion to vacate, the default judgment is set aside and the case proceeds as if the defendant had appeared from the beginning – except, depending on the order, the seller may still be bound by the TRO and asset freeze pending further proceedings. Vacatur is a procedural reset, not an acquittal.

After vacatur, the seller must file a responsive pleading – usually an answer with affirmative defenses, or a motion to dismiss if there are threshold legal defects in the complaint (personal jurisdiction, improper joinder, or failure to state a claim). This is the moment when the substantive defenses that could not be raised during default become live. A motion to dissolve the TRO and lift the asset freeze is appropriate at this stage if the seller can show the plaintiff cannot demonstrate a likelihood of success on the merits or that the balance of harms favors the seller.

Most Schedule A cases at this stage resolve through settlement rather than full adjudication. The plaintiff's leverage is the TRO and the frozen funds; the seller's leverage is the cost and time of litigation and the validity of the IP claim. The realistic options are a license agreement, a voluntary dismissal in exchange for exit from the marketplace, a reduced monetary payment, or – where the IP claim itself is weak – a contested motion to dismiss or for summary judgment. Each path has different cost, timeline, and risk implications that need to be weighed against the specific facts.

For a deeper look at the TRO dissolution process, which often runs in parallel with post-vacatur proceedings, the firm's guide to dissolving a TRO walks through the motion practice and the evidentiary requirements, using a Walmart matter as the working example – the procedural logic transfers to Amazon US cases directly.

Where this goes wrong: the mistakes sellers make alone

Attempting to handle a default judgment in a Schedule A case without legal representation creates several predictable failure points, each of which narrows the options further.

Contacting Amazon instead of the court. The account hold is Amazon's compliance with a court order. Amazon cannot unfreeze the funds or restore the account without a court order modifying or dissolving the freeze. Sellers who spend weeks cycling through Amazon Seller Central support, Account Health escalations, and appeals processes are losing the only time that matters – the window before the court acts on the turnover motion.

Filing a Rule 60(b) motion without a proposed answer. Courts deny these motions routinely when the meritorious-defense element is not pleaded concretely. A motion that simply says the seller had no knowledge of the case and should have a second chance does not meet the standard. The proposed answer must identify specific, legally cognizable defenses tied to the actual complaint.

Missing the stay motion. When a turnover order is entered, the window to pause the transfer can be measured in days. Sellers who do not understand that emergency relief requires an immediate, separate application often discover that the funds have already moved by the time a vacatur motion is fully briefed. Recovering transferred funds from a plaintiff – even after the judgment is vacated – requires additional proceedings that are costly and uncertain.

Treating the case as a Seller Central dispute. In matters we handle, sellers sometimes send detailed appeals to Amazon explaining why their products are genuine, why the complaint is wrong, and why the account should be reinstated. That documentation has no legal effect on the federal court proceeding. The only forum that can resolve the default judgment is the court that entered it.

Accepting the default judgment as final. The myth that being named as a Schedule A defendant means an automatic loss is exactly that – a myth. Courts have set aside default judgments in these cases where the grounds were properly presented. The constraint is not the law; it is the quality and speed of the motion.

Decision points and trade-offs

Every seller facing a default judgment in a Schedule A case confronts the same core decision: contest the judgment, negotiate an exit, or accept the outcome.

If the notice of default was clearly served by a method that never reached the seller, and the seller has a genuine authorized-reseller or first-sale-doctrine defense, and the funds are still frozen rather than transferred – contesting via a Rule 60(b) motion is the strongest path. The costs are significant and the outcome is not guaranteed, but the alternative is a permanent injunction and a damages order that follows the seller's US accounts indefinitely.

If the funds have already been transferred to the plaintiff, the calculus changes. Vacating the judgment still removes the permanent injunction and allows the seller to re-enter the marketplace, which may be worth pursuing. Recovering the transferred funds depends on whether the plaintiff is willing to negotiate a return as part of settlement or whether additional litigation to claw back the transferred amount is warranted. That is a cost-benefit analysis specific to the funds involved and the seller's business plans.

If the IP claim has merit – the seller was genuinely selling counterfeit goods or infringing trademark – the realistic options shift toward negotiated exit. Courts are unlikely to vacate judgments where the meritorious-defense element cannot be pleaded honestly, and attempting to do so without a credible defense risks sanctions. A negotiated resolution that lifts the asset freeze and ends the injunction on terms the seller can live with is often the better outcome than a contested motion that fails.

For sellers who are still in the early stages of a Schedule A case – before default enters – the complete picture of how these cases are structured and how defense strategy differs by stage is covered in detail in Tutamen's complete guide to Schedule A TRO defense. Acting before default enters is materially less costly and procedurally less complex than working back from a final judgment.

A decision-matrix summary: if the case shows a missed-service argument and frozen-but-not-transferred funds and a plausible defense – the route is an emergency stay of turnover plus a Rule 60(b) motion, with a timeline measured in weeks from filing. If instead the funds have already transferred and the IP claim is hard to contest – the route is negotiated resolution, with the injunction as the primary leverage point and a timeline that depends on the plaintiff's litigation posture.

One micro-case from our practice illustrates the timing point. A kitchenware FBA seller on Amazon US (winter 2025) came to us after their disbursement account went dark. They had spent several weeks working through Seller Central escalations before a search of PACER revealed they had been named in a Schedule A case; default had already been entered but the motion for default judgment had just been filed. We moved immediately to appear in the case, filed an opposition to the default judgment motion, and submitted a parallel motion to vacate the entry of default – articulating an authorized-reseller defense supported by purchase documentation. The court granted vacatur of the default entry, and the case proceeded to negotiation on the merits. The frozen balance remained intact throughout that process because we moved before the turnover motion was briefed.

A second matter shows a different entry point. A consumer electronics reseller on Amazon US (summer 2026) contacted us only after a default judgment and a turnover order had both been entered and the funds had already been transferred. The judgment itself was vacatable on personal jurisdiction grounds – the seller had no US operations apart from marketplace sales – but the transferred funds were not recoverable through the vacatur motion alone. We challenged jurisdiction, secured vacatur, and the seller was able to return to the marketplace and resume sales, but the monetary recovery required a separate negotiation with the plaintiff that took several additional months. Earlier action would have preserved the asset-freeze while the jurisdictional motion was briefed.

Related areas

• Schedule A / TRO Defense – federal defense for marketplace sellers named in IP enforcement cases
• Amazon Account Reinstatement – restoring deactivated accounts and addressing performance or policy suspensions

If you have just received notice of a default judgment – or discovered one through a frozen Seller Central balance – the urgency is real. The steps above describe the standard procedural path, but what decides the outcome is the specific wording of the court's orders, the status of the asset freeze, and whether a turnover motion is already pending. That is exactly what we assess first. To get a read on your situation, email info@tutamenlaw.com.

Frequently asked questions

How long does resolving default judgment in a Schedule A case usually take on Amazon US?

There is no single timeline, and the range is wide. A Rule 60(b) motion to vacate is typically briefed within four to eight weeks from filing; courts then rule on the papers or schedule a hearing, which can add further weeks. If the court grants vacatur, the underlying case then proceeds on its own schedule, with resolution through negotiation or further motions taking several additional months. Emergency stay motions, which are needed when a turnover order is imminent, move faster – days to a week. The honest answer is that the process takes several months end to end from the point a seller first appears, and every week of delay before that appearance narrows the options.

What are the main risks if I handle default judgment in a Schedule A case alone?

The most immediate risk is missing the procedural requirements that make a Rule 60(b) motion viable. Courts deny vacatur motions that do not articulate a meritorious defense in the correct legal form, even when the underlying facts would support one. The second risk is failing to file an emergency stay when a turnover order is pending, which allows the plaintiff to receive the frozen funds before the motion is heard. A third risk is spending time in the wrong forum – pursuing Amazon Seller Central remedies instead of the court proceeding – while the judgment clock runs. Pro se defendants in Schedule A cases face an opponent with experienced IP litigation counsel and a procedural advantage built into the SAD scheme structure.

Do I need a lawyer for default judgment in a Schedule A case?

The practical answer is yes. A Rule 60(b) motion requires federal court practice, knowledge of the specific Schedule A case law in the venue, and the ability to draft a proposed answer that meets the meritorious-defense standard. Emergency motions to stay turnover orders require immediate filing and service. Sellers who file pro se motions in these cases consistently face the same problem: the motion fails on technical grounds that a practitioner would have anticipated. The cost of representation is real, but it is typically far smaller than the value of the frozen funds or the ongoing business disruption caused by a permanent injunction.

About Tutamen

Tutamen is an independent law firm for online marketplace sellers. We represent Amazon, Walmart, Etsy and eBay sellers in account deactivations, frozen-funds recovery, intellectual-property disputes, arbitration and Notices of Dispute, and US federal Schedule A defense, plus EU marketplace regulation. Our work is attorney-led and confidential, with fees quoted up front. We act for founders, brand owners and in-house teams who need a specialist for a marketplace dispute. Schedule A matters are handled by attorneys with direct federal litigation experience; every engagement is managed by qualified counsel, not a case manager. To discuss your situation, email info@tutamenlaw.com.

Disclaimer: This article is general information, not legal advice, and does not create an attorney-client relationship. Marketplace policies and the law change, and every account and case is different. For advice on your situation, contact Tutamen at info@tutamenlaw.com.