Amazon Urges SDNY Judge to Deny ex-Seller’s Motion for Reconsideration

Amazon wants U.S. District Judge Jennifer Rochon for Southern New York in Manhattan to deny the Nov. 20 motion of its former third-party seller Shenzhen Zongheng Domain Network Co. for reconsideration of her Nov. 7 denial of its petition to vacate an arbitrator’s award in Amazon’s favor (see 2311210023), said Amazon’s memorandum of law Wednesday (docket 1:23-cv-03334) in opposition. Zongheng sought recovery of $508,000 in sales proceeds that Amazon seized, and the arbitrator let Amazon keep, when it deactivated the seller’s online store for allegedly manipulating customer product reviews. New evidence that came to Zongheng's attention in early November showing arbitrator Carol Heckman's “evident partiality and misconduct” warrants vacatur of the arbitration award and the remand of the case to the American Arbitration Association “for arbitration proceedings before an impartial decision maker,” said Zongheng's motion for reconsideration. But Zongheng uses its motion “to develop an argument” that Heckman, a retired U.S. magistrate judge, was biased in favor of Amazon, an argument it alleged in its petition commencing its action but omitted from its motion to vacate, said Amazon’s memorandum. Zongheng’s so-called “newly discovered” evidence of arbitrator wrongdoing “consists of publicly available district court filings from a case that concluded in 2022, long before Zongheng initiated this action” to vacate the Jan. 23 arbitration award, it said. Zongheng fails to meet the standard for reconsideration under Rule 60(b)(2) because the public court filings it cites could have been found by due diligence before it filed its motion to vacate and thus isn’t “truly newly discovered,” said Amazon. Even if the court were to consider the evidence, Zongheng can’t demonstrate that Heckman’s conduct was improper, “let alone establish any basis to vacate” the award under the Federal Arbitration Act, it said. Zongheng contends its newly discovered evidence shows that Heckman had ruled in Amazon’s favor “in a separate, completely unrelated arbitration proceeding,” it said. “In Zongheng’s world, a judge would have to recuse herself from every new case involving a party that had been before the same Court in the past, since that would evidently constitute partiality,” said Amazon. Because Zongheng already had “a full and fair opportunity to litigate this case,” and because it points to no evidence that couldn’t previously have been presented sufficient to require the court to reconsider its “well-reasoned decision,” its motion for reconsideration should be denied, it said.