A U.S. federal judge has denied a motion to dismiss a price-fixing lawsuit brought by Brand Little and Robin Burns that alleges Dungeness crab buyers in the U.S. states of California, Washington, and Oregon engaged in price-fixing.
The lawsuit follows an earlier, similar lawsuit by Little filed in March 2023 that alleged Pacific Seafood engaged in anticompetitive behavior and artificially suppressed the price paid to fishermen for Dungeness crab. That lawsuit was ultimately dismissed in May 2024 after U.S. Magistrate Court Judge Alex G. Tse ruled Little’s lawsuit did not sufficiently prove his case.
“Little’s allegations, while not bare bones, aren’t specific enough to support a plausible multi-hundred-member buyer cartel. He needs to offer more detail before the court will allow him to proceed with a claim that could involve hundreds of non-parties in discovery,” Tse wrote in the original decision.
Tse gave Little the ability to amend most of his claims by 20 August 2024 – and the plaintiff ultimately did so and filed a new lawsuit on 20 August against Pacific Seafood, along with several other companies.
Tse’s latest action was to deny a motion to dismiss the new lawsuit, finding the plaintiff has standing to pursue the case against the crab companies.
A Pacific Seafood spokesperson, in a statement sent to SeafoodSource, said the denial of the motion does not constitute an endorsement of the facts of the lawsuit.
“On this motion, the court is simply evaluating whether plaintiffs’ attorneys pleaded a hypothetical case under applicable legal rules – as opposed to whether any of those allegations are true or accurate, which they are not,” the spokesperson said.
The court did grant motions to dismiss for two of the companies named in the lawsuit – South Bend Products and Swanes Seafood Holding – on the grounds the lawsuit didn’t plausibly implicate either company; however, Tse gave the plaintiff the opportunity to file an amended complaint by 7 February 2025 to potentially provide evidence that would bring them back into the lawsuit.
In the new lawsuit, Little and 1,400 independent commercial crabbers on the West Coast of the U.S. allege several companies purposely drove down the ex-vessel price of Dungeness crab in the Northwest U.S. so that they could earn higher profits and “so the middlemen can make even more money than the people doing the work and risking their lives.”
“As in detail alleged herein, Defendants, led by Pacific Seafood, have created a pricing cartel that has artificially fixed, depressed, and controlled the ex-vessel price paid to crabbers in the Pacific NW Area since the beginning of the 2015/16 season, through the employment of a variety of means,” the lawsuit states.
According to a release sent by Gross Klein PC – the law firm representing Little – the plaintiffs also allege that the “cartel” of seafood buyers engaged in “extraordinary – and at times violent – actions to try to recruit other buyers into their conspiracy.”
“As a result of the buyers’ conspiracy, plaintiffs allege that crabbers were paid far less than they would have for the crab they risk their lives to catch, while the buyers – who are quintessential middlemen, selling the crab on to others – took an enormous, unfair, illegal, and unearned portion of the profit,” the release states.
The lawsuit also states the allegations are based on text messages and other documents, detailed records from the California, Washington, and Oregon departments of fish and wildlife, and information provided by participants in the Dungeness crab industry.
It claims that the evidence shows the companies conspired to stop a growing market for the crabs and that they worked to suppress the price of crab during the opening market.
“All of the Defendants were playing the same agreed-upon hardball: None of them paid more than USD 3.00 [EUR 2.88] at the opening of any portion of the Pacific NW Area Dungeness crab fishery in the 2019/20 season,” the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit claims the price for crab would have been significantly higher if the defendants hadn’t been in communication to keep it suppressed.
The plaintiffs’ lead attorney, Stuart Gross, said the lawsuit is intended to bring “profits back into the hardworking hands of the crabbers where they belong.”
“Too often, large companies believe that they, rather than the people doing the work, deserve all of the profit,” Gross said. “And, as alleged here, they believe this so strongly that they’re willing to break the law to make it happen.”
