The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to step into a class-action certification dispute in a lawsuit involving buyers of StarKist tuna.
In a case with potentially far-reaching implications for class-action suits, the court turned away a bid by StarKist Co., owned by Dongwon Industries of South Korea, to decertify tuna buyers from a price-fixing lawsuit. StarKist is being accused of conspiring with competitors to set the price of canned tuna artificially high – a practice to which it has already pleaded guilty in an antitrust case brought by the U.S. Justice Department.
Private lawsuits were also brought against all the defendants in that case, including StarKist. The trial judge granted class-action status to three classes of plaintiffs: foodservice buyers, retail trade buyers and consumers.
An appeals court overruled the class-action certification, but the 9th Circuit reversed that ruling, saying that StarKist’s evidence that only a few class members were harmed was not sufficient to warrant decertification. The U.S. Supreme Court declined without comment to hear an appeal from that ruling.
The case was closely watched, with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce weighing in in StarKist’s favor, arguing in a brief that too many judges are too quick to certify plaintiff classes in lawsuits against businesses.
