Hartley LLP partner Jason Hartley was appointed by the Court to the direct purchaser plaintiffs’ steering committee in this nationwide price fixing case. The complaint alleges that the country’s largest packaged seafood and canned tuna producers, including Starkist, Chicken of the Sea and Bumble Bee, conspired to artificially raise the prices of packaged seafood products sold in the United States. The case implicates over $10 billion of U.S. commerce, and was the subject of a Department of Justice investigation that has already led to multiple criminal guilty pleas among senior executives of the defendant companies. Hartley LLP continues to prosecute the civil action, seeking damages on behalf of purchasers of packaged seafood that overpaid as a result of the unlawful conspiracy.
