A federal court in Pennsylvania has certified for immediate appeal its denial of the defendants’ motion to dismiss in multidistrict litigation (MDL) alleging price-fixing by chocolate manufacturers. In re Chocolate Confectionary Antitrust Litig., MDL No. 1935 (M.D. Pa., April 8, 2009). The defendants in these 87 consolidated lawsuits reportedly supply 75 percent of the chocolate candy consumed by Americans each year. The lawsuits allege that the companies conspired to raise prices in 2002, 2004 and 2007 by as much as 10 percent and rely on information generated by government investigations in the United States and Canada to bolster their conspiracy allegations. At least one company spokesperson has been quoted as saying, “You can’t just infer the existence of a price-fixing conspiracy from the fact that independent competitors in concentrated industries independently choose to raise their prices.” The question certified to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals is whether the U.S.…
Category Archives 3rd Circuit
A New Jersey resident has filed a putative class action lawsuit in federal court against Perdue Farms, Inc., alleging that the company is forcing consumers to subsidize the company’s costs of disposing of extra giblet parts by “a secret practice” of inserting them into whole chickens sold by the pound to retail customers. Marin v. Perdue Farms, Inc., No. 08-001 (D.N.J., filed December 17, 2008). The plaintiff seeks relief on behalf of a “(b)(2) Injunctive Relief Class” consisting of “All persons who purchased Perdue whole chicken at retail” and a “(b)(3) Multi-State Sub-Class” consisting of those who purchased whole chickens at retail “in the states of New Jersey, California, Florida, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, and Washington.” The complaint alleges violations of consumer protection acts and unjust enrichment, and seeks “a declaration that “only the proportional amount of giblets are to be packaged in a whole chicken,”…
