Feb. 10 Deadline Looms for Amazon to Answer Motion to Remand

U.S. District Judge Ronnie Abrams for Southern New York signed an order Dec. 22 (docket 1:22-cv-10119) setting a Feb. 10 deadline for Amazon to oppose Jiakeshu Technology’s Dec. 21 motion to remand its petition to vacate an arbitrator’s decision to the same New York Superior Court from which Amazon removed it Nov. 29. Jiakeshu's petition seeks to reverse an arbitrator's ruling that Amazon can keep about $50,000 in Jiakeshu's sales proceeds it seized after shutting down the third-party seller for improperly paying customers to manipulate online product reviews (see 2212010065). As grounds for remand, Jiakeshu’s motion said, the recent Supreme Court decision, Badgerow v. Walters, said that a federal court faced with an application to confirm or vacate an award under the Federal Arbitration Act may not “look through” the underlying dispute to decide whether it has jurisdiction over the application. The decision's “practical effect,” said Jiakeshu's motion, “is that a party trying to confirm or vacate an arbitration award will often have to turn to the state, not federal, courts to do so.” Jiakeshu further argued Amazon “failed to establish a valid basis for removal.”