A federal appeals court has upheld the dismissal of antitrust claims against Black & Decker Inc. and a group of industry-leading table-saw manufacturers, finding that the lawsuit was filed more than a decade too late.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit on April 19 held that Oregon-based saw-maker SawStop's allegations that the companies had colluded to boycott its patented injury-prevention technology were barred by the four-year statute of limitations for antitrust claims.

According to the three-judge panel, SawStop's co-founders knew about the supposed scheme as early as 2002, but decided to take no legal action until 2014, opting instead to “prosecute its collusion case in the court of public opinion.”

The ruling came on SawStop's appeal of a decision by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia rejecting SawStop's argument that Black & Decker, Robert Bosch Tool Corp. and Milwaukee Electric Tool Corp. had conspired with other firms to fraudulently conceal an alleged agreement to to keep SawStop's technology off the market.

SawStop and co-founders Stephen Gass and David Fanning had argued that the delay should be excused because they hadn't found sufficient evidence of collusion until 2010, when David Peot, a former engineer for competitor Ryobi Technologies Inc., testified in a separate case about a secret meeting to make good on a promise to “get together and squish” SawStop, while the company tried to make its technology the industry standard for safety.

However, the Fourth Circuit found that SawStop had actual notice of its claims when the competitors suddenly broke off licensing negotiations in 2002 and instead pursued a joint venture to develop technology that would rival SawStop's invention. The full picture, the judges said, should have come into focus no later than December 2003, when the U.S. Department of Justice's Antitrust Division published a notice alerting the public to the planned alliance.

Still, SawStop declined to even investigate the alleged boycott at the time, even as Gass launched his own campaign against the saw manufacturers, directly accusing them in public and private of collusion.

“In short, SawStop was on both actual and inquiry notice of its claim well before Peot's 2010 testimony. And, once on notice of its claim, SawStop failed to act with reasonable diligence,” Judge G. Steven Agee wrote in a 34-page opinion.

He was joined by Judges J. Harvie Wilkinson III and James A. Wynn Jr. on the panel.

In its briefing, SawStop cited the same court's earlier ruling in the case, which allowed the boycott claim to proceed but upheld the dismissal of two other counts stemming from the supposed anti-competitive conduct. That decision, however, did not address the statute of limitations for SawStop's antitrust claims.

The company had argued that, should the judges find the case time-barred, it would create a “perverse Catch-22,” where antitrust plaintiffs ”must either sue before knowing facts sufficient to state a valid claim (resulting in dismissal), or else wait to amass facts sufficient to state a valid claim, only to be barred by the statute of limitations (again resulting in dismissal).”

Agee, however, said SawStop's position tried to “obfuscate” the court's previous opinion by adding a new requirement onto the traditional terms of fraudulent concealment.

“To be sure, the case presented by SawStop in its complaint shows that Peot's testimony was the first time SawStop learned certain specific information about the table saw manufacturers' alleged collusion,” he wrote. “But that fact has no legal significance in the case now before us as this appeal arises in a different context, on a different issue, with a different standard of review, and with an actual evidentiary record.”

An attorney for SawStop did not return a call on Monday seeking comment on the ruling, and Fanning, the company's vice president, did not respond to a request for comment.

SawStop was represented by Derek L. Shaffer, Paul F. Brinkman, Ethan C. Glass and Jonathan G. Cooper of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan in Washington, D.C.

Attorneys for the table-saw manufacturers were not immediately available to comment. Black & Decker was represented by John David Harkrider from Axinn, Veltrop & Harkrider's New York office. The company was also represented by Ted Mathias, John Tanski, Brooke Oppenheimer and Patricia Carreiro in the firm's Connecticut office; Rick Dagen and Michael O'Mara in Washington, D.C.; and Felix Gilman, also in New York.

Black & Decker's co-defendants included Bosch, represented by Houston- and Washington, D.C.-based Layne Kruse of Norton Rose Fulbright, and Ryobi, represented by Jim Kress of Baker Botts in Washington and Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based Scott Hansen of Reinhart Boerner Van Deuren.

The case, on appeal, was captioned SD3 II v. Black & Decker.