District of Washington Judge Lonny Suko refused to dismiss a conspiracy claim brought by ARC against AMH. ARC alleges that AMH made false statements about ARC, emailing more than dozen of its customers and falsely telling reporting that ARC had gone out of business. The email also asked the customers to loan AMH one of ARC’s welders, and a few months later, AMH announced at a trade show that it had tested ARC’s welder and found that it did not perform as advertised. ARC claims that both the email claiming that it had gone out of business and the statement that its welders do not perform as advertised are slanderous.
AMH moved to dismiss the conspiracy claim on the ground that the complaint failed to meet the Twombly standard of ruling out independent action. The court rejected that claim on the ground that AMH must have obtained an ARC welder to test from one of ARC’s customers. That likelihood was sufficient to support an inference of conspiracy.