Price-Fixing Case Dropped Against Perdue, Other Chicken Producers
A long-running lawsuit alleging chicken price-fixing against Perdue, Sanderson, Claxton Poultry and other chicken producers was unceremoniously dropped this week in a Chicago federal court, resulting in no payouts after seven years of litigation.
The distributor plaintiffs -- including Maplevale Farms in New York, John Gross & Co. in Pennsylvania and Ferraro Foods of New Jersey – claimed a multi-year conspiracy by major suppliers to keep wholesale prices artificially high by curbing production and sharing nonpublic data about supply and demand.
The distributors earlier won $285 million in settlements from Tyson and Pilgrim’s Pride, according to Reuters. But last October, Sanderson defeated the distributors’ allegations at trial, and Perdue and a group of other companies won a court order in June knocking them out of the case. The plaintiffs were in the process of challenging those results.
The food distributors said in court filings that overturning their losses would be a "significant" challenge and that the potential costs the defendants could seek against the plaintiffs were “substantial."
As a result of their withdrawal, Perdue, Sanderson and other defendants said they would not seek to recoup defense costs from the plaintiffs.
