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N.D. IND. 3:11-CV-268 · THE 2013 OPINION · THE STATE CASE TO 2015 · THE FEDERAL COURSE TO 2016
The corridor's defining document is a court opinion: Gumwood HP Shopping Partners, L.P. v. Simon Property Group, Inc., in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Indiana. What follows is printed at the posture the court itself set: the 2013 opinion recites the complaint's allegations in deciding whether they could proceed, and allegations are printed here as allegations. Gumwood, Heritage Square's developer, alleged that when it negotiated with national retailers in 2005 and 2006, Simon moved to keep them out. Ann Taylor LOFT and Coldwater Creek signed with Heritage Square; Lane Bryant and J. Jill were poised to. Simon was simultaneously preparing the Village at University Park. The complaint alleged that Simon used its renewal leverage at malls across the country — Woodbury Common, Lenox Square, Dadeland are the three the opinion names — to pressure Ann Taylor, and it quoted a Simon executive's internal email promising that if Ann Taylor did not yield, Simon would bring its "house of cards" down. By 2008, on the allegations, a package deal put the LOFT store in the Village instead; Lane Bryant and J. Jill declined Heritage Square; Coldwater Creek, which the complaint did not allege was pressured, stayed and opened. It was in this litigation that Simon described its own mall, in words the opinion preserves, as "the only super-regional mall serving South Bend/Mishawaka and Southern Michigan," dominant since 1979.
The case's course is printed as far as the record reached carries it. The district court denied Simon's motion to dismiss on 13 March 2013, sustaining the tying claim at the pleading stage, and denied Simon's motion for reconsideration on 17 June 2013. A parallel state case — Gumwood's April 2010 complaint in St. Joseph Superior Court, pleading tortious interference and state antitrust claims — was dismissed in December 2010, and the Indiana Court of Appeals affirmed the dismissal on 25 June 2015, holding the interference claim time-barred. In the federal case, the court denied both sides' motions for summary judgment on 18 March 2016, and later that year excluded Gumwood's damages expert for failing to tie his figures to the alleged violations, while barring Simon from arguing a reduction for losses borne by Gumwood's lender. The record reached for this entry ends there, at the threshold of trial; the case's final disposition is named as a gap, with the federal docket as its settling source. What the litigation settled beyond argument is the geography: two shopping centers less than a mile apart, both in Mishawaka, fighting in federal court over who would stock the region's better stores — the corridor's importance established by the lengths its owners went to hold it.
Sources:
- Gumwood HP Shopping Partners, L.P. v. Simon Property Group, Inc., Cause No. 3:11-cv-268, N.D. Ind. — memorandum opinion and order of 13 March 2013 (DeGuilio, J.), denying the motion to dismiss; opinion and order of 17 June 2013, denying reconsideration. The entry's account of the parties' conduct follows the complaint's allegations as the opinion recites them, and is printed at that posture.
- Gumwood HP Shopping Partners, L.P. v. Simon Property Group, Inc., Indiana Court of Appeals, memorandum decision of 25 June 2015 (No. 71A05-1408-CT-397) — the state case's filing of April 2010, dismissal of December 2010, and affirmance.
- Gumwood HP Shopping Partners, L.P. v. Simon Property Group, Inc., N.D. Ind., rulings of 2016 — cross-motions for summary judgment denied 18 March 2016; the damages-expert rulings of 2016.
- Settling source: the docket in Cause No. 3:11-cv-268, N.D. Ind.