The U.S. Department of Justice intervened last week in a price-fixing lawsuit against some of the nation’s biggest poultry companies.
The Fern Dot Org website says that could signal that the department’s own grand jury investigation into the chicken sector might result in criminal indictments.
The Justice Department asked the U.S. District Court in northern Illinois to stop discovery in a class-action lawsuit brought by food distributor Maplevale Farm, saying in a motion that a “limited stay is needed to protect the grand jury’s investigation.”
The stay applies to all “defendant employee and former employee depositions” and was granted on a temporary basis.
There will be a hearing later this week on the DOJ request for a six-month stay.
A professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison law school calls the development “significant.”
The investigation signals that the DOJ feels “there are serious violations here that require the grand jury inquiry and the potential for criminal indictments.”
The lawsuit alleges that the companies colluded on price hikes by relying on Agri Stats, a secretive information sharing service used by poultry companies.
The suit also says those companies manipulated prices up to artificially high levels.