December 18, 2023
Illinois' state and federal courts did some heavy lifting in 2023 as they issued long-awaited guidance for litigating biometric privacy claims, resolved price-fixing allegations against major food industry suppliers and issued a pandemic-related tuition reimbursement ruling that may signal a dynamic shift within the Seventh Circuit. Here, Law360 looks back at some of the year's biggest decisions in the state.
December 06, 2023
Boston Market, Golden Corral, Cracker Barrel, Domino's and other restaurant chains continued Tuesday to contest part of an $8 million class settlement resolving other direct buyers' chicken price-fixing claims, arguing specifically that the deal improperly bargained away claims they still want to assert in a subsequent trial.
October 25, 2023
An Illinois federal jury sided with Sanderson Farms following a six-week antitrust trial on Wednesday, rejecting thousands of chicken buyers' claims that the company participated in an unlawful conspiracy to raise broiler chicken prices by limiting its supply.
October 23, 2023
Sanderson Farms Inc. "did nothing wrong" by cutting its broiler chicken supply in 2008 and 2011 because the company based those decisions on internal modeling and predictions rather than a widespread industry conspiracy, it argued to an Illinois federal jury Monday.
October 16, 2023
An Illinois federal jury weighing price-fixing claims against broiler chicken producer Sanderson Farms heard from an expert witness Monday that the company made production cuts in its own interest, and that experts who have testified otherwise ignored important realities of the chicken industry.
October 16, 2023
Plaintiffs claiming Sanderson Farms conspired with other producers to restrict the supply of chicken have failed to provide the Chicago federal jury currently hearing the case with an evidentiary basis for that claim or for the existence of a larger price-fixing conspiracy, the poultry giant told an Illinois federal judge Friday in a bid to win the case outright.
October 13, 2023
An Illinois federal judge gave his initial blessing Friday to chicken buyers' bid to add $75 million to the pot of settlements they've reached in a massive consolidated price-fixing case, bringing their total prospective recovery to more than $284 million.
October 06, 2023
Direct purchasers in a massive consolidated chicken price-fixing case asked an Illinois federal judge on Friday to bless another $75 million in settlements they reached with House of Raeford Farms and Koch Foods ahead of an ongoing jury trial.
September 18, 2023
Sanderson Farms was one of three masterminds behind a scheme that brought 14 broiler chicken producers together in a conspiracy to raise prices by limiting their supply, causing more than $2 billion in overcharges, an Illinois federal jury heard Monday.
September 15, 2023
The first civil jury trial in massive consolidated litigation accusing the nation's largest chicken suppliers of fixing prices is set to kick off in Chicago federal court Monday, and antitrust experts say they'll be watching to see what both sides have learned from the U.S. Department of Justice's recently fumbled criminal probe over the same alleged conduct.