Antitrust Law Daily Wrap Up, ANTITRUST—N.D. Ill.: Turkey producers granted partial summary judgment in price fixing suit, (Jul 8, 2026)

By Kenneth H. Ryesky, M.B.A., J.D.

Use of first person plural "we" and "our part" in e-mail supported inference that one defendant knowingly shared production information with its competitors.

The federal district court in Chicago, Illinois has partially granted summary judgment to some turkey producers in combined antitrust litigation. The court made the determination with respect motions by five specific defendants, reserving for a later date the decisions on "all other motions, claims, and arguments pending," including state law claims (In Re Turkey Antitrust Litigation, No. 1:19-cv-08318 (N.D. Ill. Jul. 7, 2026)).

Background. In the wake of escalating prices, litigation was brought alleging anticompetitive conduct in various agriculture industry sectors. In addition to the antitrust litigation that hit the beef, pork, seafood, and broiler chicken industries, several antitrust lawsuits alleged improper practices in the turkey industry were consolidated together. The combined litigation had three groups of Plaintiffs: (1) the Direct Purchaser Plaintiffs (DPPs); (2) the Commercial and Institutional Indirect Purchaser Plaintiffs (CIIPPs); and (3) the Direct Action Plaintiffs (DAPs).

Named as defendants were turkey producers and processors (along with many of their controlled subsidiaries and related entities), and industry data aggregator Agri Stats, Inc. (Agri Stats); several alleged co-conspirator entities were also named but not designated as defendants.

Following class certifications and some settlements, the remaining defendants moved for summary judgment on all surviving claims. The court issued an opinion/order addressing the dismissal motions of the following defendants: (1) Butterball LLC (Butterball); (2) Jennie-O Turkey Store, Inc. (JOTS); (3) Prestage Farms of South Carolina, LLC and related entities (collectively, Prestage); Perdue Farms, Inc. and Perdue Farms LLC (collectively, Perdue); and (5) Foster Farms LLC and Foster Poultry Farms (collectively, Foster).

Price fixing. The court granted summary judgment to Foster and Perdue on their price fixing claim, but denied summary judgment on that claim to Butterball, JOTS, and Prestage. Here, there was economic evidence that those defendants reduced their production during the relevant period, and also evidence of parallel conduct. These alone are not sufficient to show an explicit agreement.

The court then considered the noneconomic evidence, which notably included membership in and participation in the activities of industry trade association National Turkey Federation (NTF). From the evidence presented, the court found that a reasonable jury could conclude that Butterball, JOTS, and Prestage participated in a conspiracy to drive the price of turkey up by restricting the supply, while none of the evidence would permit a reasonable jury to similarly find with respect to Foster and Perdue.

Some of the DAPs contended that the scheme was done through a so-called "hub-and-spokes" conspiracy with Agri Stats being the hub. But the court noted that "there was no communication between Agri Stats and the processor Defendants instructing them to raise their prices. At most, the evidence shows that Agri Stats identified products where a processor was selling at prices below the national average." Summary judgment was thus granted to all five of the subject defendants to the extent of the "hub-and-spokes" conspiracy claim.

Rule of reason claims. The court granted summary judgment to all five subject defendants on the plaintiffs' information exchange claims, which, not being per se violations of the Sherman Act, are subject to a rule of reason analysis. Here, the plaintiffs failed to show that the practices complained of in this regard had a substantially anticompetitive effect, so the court had no need to further pursue the rule of reason's burden-shifting analysis. The data in Agri Stats's reports was reported as national averages of aggregated data, and the plaintiffs did not sufficiently support their contention that the defendants here deanonymized that data. "While Plaintiffs' experts offered methods by which a processor could have mathematically reverse-engineered a competitor's price from the Express Sales Book, Plaintiffs failed to identify evidence showing that Defendants actually did that."

The JOTS entities. The court partially dismissed the case as it pertained to entities related to JOTS. Hormel Foods Corporation is JOTS's the parent company, which wholly owns Hormel Foods, LLC. The disputed facts regarding Hormel Foods Corporation's actions precluded the requested summary judgment dismissing it from the litigation, but the plaintiffs did not respond to the defendants' contention that Hormel Foods, LLC, a holding company, had no operations that pertained to the litigation. Summary judgment was accordingly granted dismissing Hormel Foods, LLC from the litigation because the plaintiffs had abandoned their argument in that regard.

Prestage's issues. The court partially granted defendant summary judgment to Prestage. There remained unresolved issues as to when Prestage became or should have become aware of the damages it allegedly incurred, so summary judgment was denied as to its statute of limitations argument. But there was no dispute that Prestage Farms of South Carolina, LLC, as a middleman selling live turkeys to other turkey producers, did not actually sell the processed turkeys, so no reasonable jury could find that it participated in any conspiracy alleged, and summary judgment was accordingly granted.

The Case is No. 1:19-cv-08318.

Judge: Harjani, S.

Attorneys: Abby R. Wolf (Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP) for John Gross and Co. Inc. Olga Fleysh (Hogan Lovells US LLP) for Agri Stats, Inc.

Companies: John Gross and Co. Inc.; Agri Stats, Inc.

Cases: Antitrust IllinoisNews