On September 13, 2024 a U.S. District Judge in the eastern district of Missouri, dismissed multidistrict litigation alleging multiple agricultural input companies conspired across three distribution levels.
In short, Judge Sarah Pitlyk said the plaintiffs failed to make a case the ag input companies violated U.S. antitrust law.
This series of lawsuits brought together as a Consolidated Amended Complaint (CAC) came after the increased availability of e-commerce platforms.
The first class action lawsuit part of this case was filed in January of 2021.
Then, farmer plaintiffs filed multiple similar cases in various courts across the U.S claiming the defendants “created a secretive distribution process that keeps Crop Inputs prices inflated at supracompetitive levels by denying farmers access to transparent pricing terms that would allow comparison shopping and better-informed purchasing decisions—a scheme that is facilitated by Defendants’ boycott of electronic sales platforms, with their purportedly greater price transparency.”
In the case, e-commerce platforms named as examples include Farmer’s Business Network (FBN), FarmTrade, and Agroy, Inc.
The manufacturer defendants include Bayer CropScience LP; Bayer CropScience Inc.; BASF Corporation; Corteva Incorporated; Pioneer Hi-Bred International; and Syngenta Corporation.
The wholesaler defendants include Cargill, Incorporated; Tenkoz Incorporated; Univar Solutions, Incorporated; and Winfield Solutions, LLC (Winfield).
The retailer defendants include CHS Incorporated; Federated Co-operatives Limited; GROWMARK Inc.; Nutrien Ag Solutions, Incorporated; and Simplot AB Retail Sub Incorporated.
From the court documents released last week, the judge agreed with five reasons the defendants moved to have the CAC dismissed.
1. Plaintiffs have not pled a plausible boycott conspiracy through either direct or circumstantial evidence, and that the CAC impermissibly relies on group pleading by failing to differentiate among Defendants.
2. Plaintiffs have failed to allege that Defendants caused an injury that would confer standing to pursue antitrust claims.
3. Plaintiffs’ Sherman Act claim is time-barred.
4. All of Plaintiffs’ state law claims fail for the same reasons that their federal antitrust claims fail, and that certain of the state claims fail for reasons related to state law.
5. Plaintiffs’ RICO claim fails as a matter of law.
The Sherman Act and RICO claims will be dismissed with prejudice. The U.S District Court declined to exercise jurisdiction over the state claims, and those claims will be dismissed without prejudice.
In a general summary, the judge found the claims to be generalizations.
In the past four years, both in the U.S. (for example in the cases above) and Canada, anti-trust complaints have been brought to the courts and regulatory authorities.
For example, on March 15, 2022, the Canadian Competition Bureau (CCB) issued a press release and position statement when it closed an investigation after determining the evidence did not demonstrate an agreement existed between competitors with respect to FBN.
