US: Tyson Foods moves price-fixing case to Illinois court

A federal court judge in Florida granted a motion by Tyson Foods to transfer an antitrust lawsuit to a federal court in Illinois.

The case involves Chicken Kitchen USA, a restaurant franchisor and broiler chicken buyer, which brought the case on April 21. Chicken Kitchen alleged that Tyson and its subsidiaries Tyson Chicken, Tyson Breeders and Tyson Poultry, conspired with others to fix the price of broiler chickens “…by secretly and illegally sharing information and then using that information to coordinate output and manipulate relevant price indices,” court documents state.

In response, Tyson moved to transfer the case to the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, which already had consolidated 12 “factually similar” cases filed in that district into three class action cases. Part of that litigation is Maplevale Farms, a food distributor. Maplevale filed an antitrust lawsuit against Tyson and 14 other poultry companies alleging that the companies conspired to “fix, raise, maintain and stabilize,” prices for broiler chickens.

Full Content: Law 360

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