There's nothing better than a case with good facts. I mean, I'm a lawyer, I think the law is pretty interesting. But 101 jurisprudence doesn't usually make for the best cocktail party chatter (unless you're surrounded by other lawyers, which doesn't normally make for the best cocktail party).
Judge Hall had a fun case yesterday that had some pretty fun facts for your next gathering with the normals, as well as some neat law for your next lawyer Hoedown.
Yangjiang Xinhe Houseware Co., Ltd v. Telebrands Corp., C.A. No. 25-365-JLH (D. Del. Feb. 11, 2026) looked like a typical DJ action. The plaintiff was allegedly a foreign supplier of hoses to various resellers who had been accused of infringement and sued for non-infringement, alleging that it was obligated to indemnify the resellers.
There followed the usual series of motions to dismiss and amendments to the pleadings. Something about all of this must have seemed a bit fishy, because Judge Hall ordered the plaintiff to produce the relevant indemnity agreements that allegedly gave rise to DJ jurisdiction.
The produced agreement, however, raised more questions than it answered. In particular, the agreement was dated February 17, 2025, about a week before the case was filed. However, the Court noted that "the document on its face refers to events that occurred well after February 17, 2025." Id. at 3.
Curious about how this could be, I pulled the agreement from the docket and found a few of these oddly dated references which included statements like:
WHEREAS, Telebrands Corp. (“Telebrands”), through its “Pocket Hose” brand,submitted 17 infringement notifications on Amazon.com between February 17, 2025, and April 3, 2025, alleging Supplier’s garden hoses infringe U.S. Patent Nos. 11,608,915 or 10,174,870
as well as a reference to the filing of the complaint itself:
WHEREAS, in response to Amazon delisting the Accused Products, Supplier filed a lawsuit against Telebrands seeking declaratory judgment of noninfringement of the Asserted Patents on March 24, 2025, Yangjiang Xinhe Houseware Co., Ltd. v. Telebrands Corp., Case No. 1:25-cv-00365-JLH (D. Del.) (the “Litigation”);
Although February 17 is referenced in the agreement several times as the date for the agreement "to be executed" and the date the agreement was "entered into" none of the signatures were dated at all.
Judge Hall then issued an order to show cause requiring the plaintiff to either prove that it had an indemnity agreement when the action was filed, or to dismiss the action without prejudice. When everything shook out, it appeared that the plaintiff had entered into an indemnity agreement after the filing of the initial complaint, but before the filing of the amended complaint.
This led to the fun bit of legal theory in the opinion, where Judge Hall discussed the effect of the amended complaint, and whether it was possible to cure a lack of subject matter jurisdiction via an amendment, ultimately holding that it was not:
I acknowledge that there is a circuit split on whether a plaintiff can “cure” a so-called defect in standing by filing an amended or supplemental pleading that alleges facts that arose after the original complaint was filed. Federal Circuit cases seem to go both ways. The Third Circuit has made clear that standing must exist “on the date the lawsuit was commenced.”
In my view, the best reading of binding precedent is that: (1) there must be standing at the time the original complaint was filed; and (2) when determining whether there was standing at the time the original complaint was filed, the Court should assess the allegations in the amended complaint (with or without supplemental evidence, depending on whether the jurisdictional question is treated as a factual or facial attack).
Id. at 4-5 (internal citations omitted)
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