The Justice Department disagrees with arguments by four major frozen potato product manufacturers who have been sued for allegedly keeping prices of French fries, "tater tots" and other products artificially high.
Federal lawyers' statement of interest argues that Lamb Weston, McCain Foods, J.R. Simplot and Cavendish Farms have not sufficiently supported their contention that use of a data analytics platform called PotatoTrack was “legitimate, commercial conduct.” The companies control 98% of the $68 billion market in frozen potato products, according to a complaint by purchasers.
Pennsylvania supermarket chain Redner’s Markets filed the proposed class-action lawsuit in 2024. The court consolidated lawsuits based on the categories of plaintiffs – direct purchasers, commercial and institutional indirect purchasers, and consumers.
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The manufacturers have asked the court to dismiss the cases for failure to state a legitimate claim. The companies say the potato buyers identified "price increases implemented from 2021-2023—amid surging input costs and historic, pandemic-era inflation—without pleading facts that show that those increases resulted from an unlawful conspiracy.”
The DOJ brief takes issue with the potato companies’ suggestion that information sharing with “the mutual expectation that reciprocal information will be provided” is not enough to establish “concerted action,” arguing instead that Supreme Court precedent “refutes this argument.”
DOJ also pushed back against the claim that "exchanges of aggregated, anonymized, or backward-looking information are incapable of causing anticompetitive effects.”
The companies "fail to grapple with the ways that such information can harm the competitive process," DOJ said. It urged the court to conduct "fact-intensive analysis that precedent demands in this case. Doing so will help ensure that the antitrust laws remain a supple tool for protecting competition and securing benefits for consumers, including in the industries that have the largest impact on Americans’ budget.
