StarKist and Chicken of the Sea filed a motion to exclude testimony in an ongoing class-action litigation – kicked off by the companies’ roles in a price-fixing scandal – due partially to what the counsel is labeling “cultural and racial stereotypes.”
The motion, filed on 19 September by the counsel for Dongwon Industries Co. is intended to exclude the testimony of Dr. Gary Hamilton; sourced by the direct purchases plaintiffs in the litigation. The motion to exclude asserts that Hamilton’s testimony is intended to blur the lines between both of the U.S.-based companies and their Asian parent companies: Dongwon Industries in the case of StarKist and Thai Union Group for Chicken of the Sea.
The motion claims that the testimony of Hamilton relies on opinions that are “offensive and unreliable.”
“They are built on a foundation of improper character evidence, which invites the jury to make specific conclusions about StarKist and the ‘Dongwon Group,’ and COSI [Chicken of the Sea International] and TUG [Thai Union Group], based on generalizations of Asian business culture and Korean and first-generation Chinese-owned Thai business culture in particular,” the motion states.
The motion to exclude claims that Hamilton “relies on cultural and racial stereotypes” in his testimony, citing generalizations about how Korean or Chinese-owned businesses are structured.
“These generalizations are not relevant because they invite an improper inference that StarKist and DWI or its other affiliates are more likely to have organized their business in a particular way because that is how Korean businesses are ‘typically’ organized,” the motion states. “The only potential value of informing the jury when and in what way DWI or StarKist acts as Korean companies typically do is if both (1) there is something predictable or informative about how Korean companies typically act; and (2) that predictable thing is relevant to the vicarious liability analysis.”
StarKist is fighting the class-action litigation in the wake of being ordered to pay USD 100 million (EUR 90.9 million) for its role in the tuna price-fixing conspiracy, the statutory maximum. Chicken of the Sea – which blew the whistle on the price-fixing – and Bumble Bee Foods were also involved in the conspiracy, which comprised of meetings between 2011 and 2013 that involved how “to fix, raise, and maintain the prices of packaged seafood” in the United States.
All three companies have also been dealing with a number of lawsuits a number of which have been settled. In June, Bumble Bee settled a civil suit with Walmart, while StarKist settled a lawsuit with Walmart in January for USD 20.5 million (EUR 18.6 million).
Chicken of the Sea, as well, has settled with a number of retailers in the ongoing civil litigation that continues to result from the price-fixing case.
