Serta Parties Agree to February 2026 Trial on Contract Breach Claims Arising Out of 2020 Uptier Exchange; Company Suggests Mediation

At a status conference today, parties in the Serta Simmons Bedding case said they are working on a litigation timetable that would culminate in a February 2026 trial on contract breach claims arising out of the company’s 2020 uptier exchange. Judge Christopher Lopez tentatively set the trial for February in the wake of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit’s “open market purchase” decision reversing former judge David R. Jones’ March 2023 summary judgment ruling.

In its Dec. 31, 2024, decision, the Fifth Circuit found that Jones incorrectly applied the open market purchase exception to the uptier transaction when he rejected the excluded lenders’ breach claims. The appellate court remanded the contract claims for further proceedings, with Circuit Judge Andrew S. Oldham writing that “the Excluded Lenders have a strong case” that Serta and the participating lenders breached the credit agreement.

The participating lenders did not file a petition for U.S. Supreme Court review of the Fifth Circuit’s decision by the June 18 deadline.

Today, C. Lee Wilson of Gibson Dunn, counsel for the participating lenders, said the parties agreed to a trial from Feb. 23 to Feb. 27, 2026, that could continue the following week. Judge Lopez confirmed that these dates work for the court and set a pretrial conference for Feb. 20 at 10 a.m. ET.

Wilson added that the parties will submit a separate stipulation “sometime in the near future” focused on the claims of the excluded LCM lenders. The LCM lenders maintain that they still have live contract claims, while the participating lenders have taken the opposite view, arguing that the Fifth Circuit found that LCM waived the claims by failing to raise them on appeal.

Wilson said the parties are working out a schedule for LCM to file an amended complaint, while the participating lenders would respond with a motion to dismiss.

David Lender of Weil Gotshal, counsel to Serta, said that discovery related to the upcoming trial could be expensive and “a distraction for our company.” He suggested that the participating lenders and excluded lenders may want to consider an “early mediation here before we get too deep into discovery.”

Judge Lopez agreed that mediation “would make a lot of sense” but stopped short of ordering it.