October 2023 Animal Law Updates: Big Money

There are lots of legal strategies for protecting animals, but the oldest in the book — which has stood the test of time — is targeting the pocketbooks of the industries exploiting them.  The case we’re covering this month fits the bill.  It is a case alleging that pork producers violated antitrust laws.

Source: Animal Outlook/YouTube

The Basics of Antitrust, and the Allegations Against Pork Producers

Antitrust laws protect the marketplace from anti-competitive conduct.  To do so, they prohibit competitors from conspiring with each other, unfairly increasing their profits to the detriment of consumers.  Conspiracies can take on many shapes and sizes, but one of the simplest examples is price fixing.  Imagine that it costs 50 cents for a company to grow and sell an ear of corn.  If all the corn producers are competing, Producer A might sell the corn for $5.00, at which point Producer B will offer it for $3.00, undercutting Producer A and still making a profit. But if instead of competing, Producers A and B conspire to fix the price of corn at $5.00, consumers will overpay for corn.

In the case at issue, dozens of plaintiffs have alleged that pork producers, including Hormel, Smithfield, and Tyson Foods, conspired by exchanging “detailed, competitively sensitive, and non-public information about prices, capacity, sales volume, and demand.”  According to the plaintiffs, they accomplished this using a specialized information-sharing service called Agri Stats, which “allowed them to monitor each other’s production and thereby control pork supply and price in violation of antitrust law.”

A Positive Development: Judge Denies the Pork Producers’ Motion to Dismiss

As is often the case in litigation, the defendants filed a motion to dismiss — a motion that, if granted, would have eliminated plaintiffs’ claims early on.  Successful motions to dismiss not only win cases for defendants, but they do so before the parties exchange information in an expensive process called discovery.  Even if a judge partially grants a motion to dismiss, this can limit the claims available to the plaintiffs, and therefore limit the defendants’ liability.

In this case, the pork producers made three arguments in their motion to dismiss. First, they argued that plaintiffs could not sue at all under the statute at issue, the Packers and Stockyards Act.

Second, they argued that some claims should be dismissed because they fell outside the statute of limitations.  The statute of limitations places a time limit on bringing claims, and according to the pork producers, some of the claims were too old.  If old claims get dismissed, then even if pork producers ultimately lose, they will not lose on as many claims, so they will not have to pay out as much money.

Third, the pork producers argued that the claims should only apply to products that are entirely made of pork; in other words, they should not apply to mixed products in which pork is one ingredient.  Like the statute of limitations argument, this argument would significantly reduce the defendants’ liability by limiting the scope of the lawsuit.

Long story short: the Court rejected the motion to dismiss in its entirety.  So, the antitrust case against the pork producers will move full steam ahead.

Speak Up Tee By Tiny Rescue: Animal Collection

For previous Animal Law Updates, be sure to check out:

• September 2023 Animal Law Updates: A Small Petition With Big Implications
• August 2023 Animal Law Update: Go Local
• July 2023 Animal Law Update: Someone is Suing the FBI?
• June 2023: Animal Law Updates
• May 2023: Animal Law Updates
• April 2023: Animal Law Updates
• March 2023: Animal Law Updates
• February 2022: Animal Law Updates
• January 2022: Animal Law Updates
• A Look at 2022’s Biggest Moments for Animals in Court

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