Koch Foods has filed an appeal against a class-action lawsuit saying its settlement with customers was for price-fixing, not bid-rigging.
Chief Judge Philip Brimmer found “by a preponderance of the evidence” that a bid-rigging conspiracy existed involving Pilgrim’s, Koch, Claxton Poultry, Tyson Foods, Mar-Jac and George’s Inc.
In denying a motion for acquittal after a mistrial, Brimmer said a jury could reasonably find Koch’s William Kantola joined the conspiracy by 2014.
In a new filing in an appeals court, Koch Foods said restaurants — including Golden Corral, Church’s and Zaxby’s — opted to pursue their bid-rigging allegations as individual direct-action plaintiffs in a separate track of the litigation and were never part of the certified class that reached a $75 million settlement with Koch and House of Raeford Farms.
The class action, Koch said, focused solely on allegations that chicken producers conspired to reduce supply and inflate prices — not on bid rigging.
The company argued the court properly excluded the restaurants’ claims from the settlement calculations and had no obligation to assign them value before granting final approval.
Economic analysis filed with the court found the restaurants paid 15 per cent more for chicken in 2015 than 2013 while market prices declined by 17.7 per cent.
Analyst Laurel Van Allen estimated damages of more than $118 million in 2015 alone — just one year of the alleged eight-year conspiracy.
The objectors argue that despite this evidence, the district court failed to consider the value of their bid-rigging claims when approving settlements with Koch and House of Raeford, focusing only on classwide supply reduction claims.
Koch is infamous for its multi-million-dollars funding of Republican Party activities.