Bona Law Wins Complete Summary Judgment for Foster Farms in Nationwide Turkey Price-Fixing MDL
July 10, 2026
Bona Law has secured a complete victory for its client Foster Farms in the multidistrict litigation accusing the nation's largest turkey processors of conspiring to fix prices. In a July 7, 2026 decision, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois granted summary judgment in full to Foster Farms—dismissing every claim against the company made by two classes and several direct-action plaintiffs—while three co-defendants must now proceed toward trial on the surviving claims against them.
The litigation, In re Turkey Antitrust Litigation, No. 19-cv-08318, consolidated separate complaints filed in 2019 by direct purchasers (such as national grocery chains and distributors), indirect purchasers (such as companies and institutions that bought from direct purchasers), and several direct-action plaintiffs who later filed and opted out of their classes. All of the plaintiffs alleged that the country's major turkey processors—Butterball, Cargill, Cooper Farms, Farbest, Foster Farms, Hormel/JOTS, House of Raeford, Prestage, Perdue, and Tyson—conspired with benchmarking company Agri Stats to restrict the supply of turkey and inflate prices during two windows, 2008 to 2009 and 2012 to 2013, in violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1.
The filings followed a DOJ announcement that it was investigating Agri Stats. Similar civil cases were also brought relating to Agri Stats against processors in the pork, chicken, beef, and seafood industries.
In In re Turkey, Plaintiffs pressed two separate theories for their antitrust claim. First, a standard per se price-fixing claim, in which they alleged defendants directly agreed among themselves to cut production, evidenced largely through communications at National Turkey Federation (NTF) conferences and the NTF's 2008 “Outlook Report,” which forecasted industry-wide production levels. Second, an information-exchange claim under the rule of reason, in which they alleged that defendants exchanged competitively sensitive production and pricing data through Agri Stats' confidential benchmarking reports independently violated the antitrust laws. Some of the plaintiffs also alleged a hub-and-spoke conspiracy theory with Agri Stats as the hub.
By the time of summary judgment, several defendants had reached settlements with the plaintiffs. The court's decision concerned summary judgment motions filed by the remaining five defendants: Butterball, JOTS, Prestage, Foster Farms, and Perdue. The court, U.S. District Judge Sunil R. Harjani presiding, granted summary judgment to Foster Farms and Perdue on every claim, per se and rule of reason alike.
The other defendants’ motions were granted in part. Butterball, JOTS, and Prestage will proceed to trial, beginning October 8, 2026, on the per se conspiracy claim, as the court found there was a sufficient evidence for a jury to consider plaintiffs’ claims because they had been part of an NTF steering committee and had engaged in extensive, direct communications with competitors about production plans, evidence a reasonable jury could construe as an agreement to restrict supply. But those same three defendants won summary judgment on the rule-of-reason and hub-and-spoke information-exchange theories, which the court rejected across the board for lack of evidence that Agri Stats data was ever actually used to monitor or enforce any agreement.
The court's reasoning drew a sharp line between Foster Farms and the defendants headed to trial. Unlike those defendants, Foster had no role in the 2008 Outlook Report—it merely attended the NTF conferences where the report was discussed, which the court held, citing Kleen Products LLC v. Georgia-Pacific LLC, 910 F.3d 927, 938 (7th Cir. 2018), provided only “the opportunity to conspire,” not evidence that Foster actually joined an agreement.
The remaining evidence plaintiffs offered fared no better. Most of it consisted of Foster Farms’ internal emails discussing competitors' prices—ordinary business intelligence-gathering that the court found insufficient, without more, to support an inference of collusion. The court was also unpersuaded by two pieces of evidence plaintiffs had taken out of context. One was a Foster Farms employee's email stating “I think we are all aligned,” which plaintiffs argued reflected coordination with JOTS; read in full, the court found the comment concerned only Foster Farms' own internal sales policy. The other was a 2010 speech by Foster Farms' vice president of turkey at an NTF convention referencing industry “collaboration,” which the court found, read in context, was about the NTF's convention planning and broader industry issues rather than a secret production-cutting scheme.
The court also credited Foster Farms’ unrebutted explanations for its business decisions during the relevant periods: Foster Farms’ California base, distinct from the Midwest-centered industry, meant higher shipping and feed costs, and the company had made an independent strategic shift toward premium organic and antibiotic-free turkey products—a higher-margin segment unrelated to any industry-wide supply agreement. Taken together, the court concluded that “there cannot be a reasonable inference allowing a finding that Foster agreed to cut production with other Defendants.”
“This is a complete win for our client,” said Aaron Gott, partner at Bona Law and lead counsel for Foster Farms. “The court correctly recognized that showing up to industry meetings and thinking about competitors' prices—things nearly every company does—isn't evidence of a conspiracy. Foster Farms competed independently throughout this period, and the record bore that out once it was actually tested at summary judgment.”
“We are pleased that the court recognized that the scant ‘evidence’ put forth by Plaintiffs in support of their claims against Foster Farms was inadequate,” said James Lerner, Bona Law partner and co-lead counsel for Foster Farms.
The ruling brings Foster Farms' involvement in the long-running MDL to a close—pending a similar disposition of additional, more recently filed direct action plaintiff claims—while Butterball, JOTS, and Prestage head toward an October trial on the narrowed per se claim. The court candidly noted that the evidence against the remaining defendants, while sufficient to survive summary judgment, is “far from overwhelming,” leaving the ultimate question of liability in the hands of the jury.
Bona Law is a nationwide antitrust boutique with extensive agriculture and food industry experience that litigates antitrust and competition matters, including defending companies against class action multidistrict litigation. Other recent Bona Law class action cases include McWhite v. Foster Farms, In re Capacitors Antitrust Litigation, Markson v. CRST International, and In re Disposable Contact Lens Antitrust Litigation. Bona Law lawyers have deep experience spanning many landmark cartel MDLs in the past two decades.