The number of lawsuits against the three biggest canned tuna sellers in the United States is growing, with six new suits alleging the companies of fixing prices just last week, all class actions filed by a total of 15 individual consumers.
The consumers are suing Bumble Bee Foods, StarKist, Tri-Union Seafoods and King Oscar. Tri-Union distributes tuna in the United States under the brand Chicken of the Sea on behalf of its parent company, Thai Union Frozen Products. King Oscar is a Norwegian company known for sardines and similar canned seafood. Thai Union bought the company in a recent acquisition.
The new cases, all filed in federal court, join the flood of lawsuits already accusing the three companies of colluding to keep prices for their products high despite a recorded drop in consumption in recent years.
The litigants in the latest round of suits come from across the country, including Amy Waterman of Maine; Casey Christensen of South Dakota, Scott Dennis of New York, Adam Buehrens of California and Brian Depperschmidt of Kansas; Rick Musgrave of California; Amy Joseph of Illinois; Steven Colberg of Minnesota, Michael Juetten of California and Carla Lown of Iowa, and Jinkyoung Moon of California, Clarissa Simon of Washington, D.C., Corey Norris of North Carolina and Nigel Warren of New York.
In all the cases, the plaintiffs are described as consumers who bought packaged tuna products from one of the three companies for personal use and “suffered pecuniary injury” as a result of artificially-high prices.
The defendants are facing more than a dozen lawsuits in total, all accusing them of conspiring to fix prices despite documented evidence that canned and packaged tuna consumption is dropping in the United States. In addition to individual consumers, the companies also face suits from distributors and at least two restaurants who also claim the companies worked together to fix prices.
