SPOKANE, Wash. (Feb. 18, 2016) — OTR Wheel Engineering Inc., a distributor of off-the-road tires and wheels, is asking the judge in a 22-month-old product counterfeiting case to stick to his decision to allow the case to go to a jury trial.
OTR Wheel filed a motion Feb. 16 in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington seeking to block a motion by the defendant, West Worldwide Services Inc. of Clive, Iowa, asking Judge Lonny R. Suko to reconsider his decision allowing the case to go to a jury trial.
Rome, Ga.-based OTR Wheel filed suit against West Worldwide in April 2014, alleging that West Worldwide had counterfeited the federally registered tread design and trademark for its Outrigger OTR tires.
“The court properly exercised its discretion and authority…in ruling that plaintiffs' trade secret claim should proceed to trial,” the OTR Wheel motion said.
“The court properly exercised its discretionary power to remedy error under highly unusual circumstances to prevent the manifest injustice that would result in refusing to submit plaintiffs' trade secret claim to the jury for determination,” it added.
In deciding to proceed to a jury trial, the court did not base its decision of “new evidence, arguments and conjecture,” according to the motion.
“Rather, the court's reconsideration finding as to the requisite degree of trade secret specificity relief on the same evidence OTR originally supplied in opposition to West's motion for summary judgment,” it said.
“The court correctly determined that this evidence is sufficient to allow OTR's trade secret claims to go to trial.”
The Feb. 16 motion by OTR Wheel was the 385th document filed so far in the case, according to PACER, the search engine for documents in cases filed in federal courts.