JBS Offers Eateries $13M In New ‘Ice-Breaker’ Pork Settlement
Bryan Koenig, 16 April 2021
JBS USA Food Co. has settled with more plaintiffs in litigation accusing meat-processing giants of scheming to inflate pork prices, with commercial and institutional indirect buyers asking a Minnesota federal judge to preliminarily greenlight a $12.75 million deal.
This would be the first settlement these plaintiffs, which include a number of restaurant chains, have reached with meatpackers. JBS has already cut multimillion-dollar deals with direct buyers and consumer indirect purchasers, both of which similarly called their settlements “ice-breakers” that, like Thursday’s agreement, come with promises to help with ongoing claims against other pork producers such as Clemens, Hormel, Tyson and Smithfield.
In their motion for preliminary approval Thursday, the commercial and institutional buyers, which include Longhorn’s Steakhouse, defined the settlement class as anyone who indirectly bought pork from the defendants “during the settlement class period for their own business use in commercial food preparation” based on a class period starting in 2009.
Class members are estimated to number in the “hundreds of thousands,” according to the brief, which argues that the class bears all the hallmarks for certification, including many potential claims members with similar claims.
