Court Approves Final Settlement in Chicken Growers Case

Berger Montague is pleased to announce that the Plaintiffs’ $100 million class action settlement with the last remaining defendant in the Chicken Growers case has been granted final approval by the Court. Together with the prior settlements reached with other defendants, the case has now brought $169 million in relief to the nationwide class of chicken growers. This is believed to be the largest ever settlement for growers against chicken companies. As a result of this historic result, the Court also approved additional service award amounts of $100,000, bringing the total awarded to each of the plaintiffs who served as class representatives to $150,000.

“We are gratified to have fought for this group of deserving clients for nearly eight years against an alleged cartel of chicken integrator companies whom, we claimed, colluded in violation of the antitrust laws to the detriment of their own farmers,” remarked Eric Cramer, firm Chairman and one of the lead lawyers for the class. “The success of this case is further proof of the effectiveness and importance of private enforcement of the antitrust laws for consumers, small businesses, and workers in this country.”

The case was filed in 2017 and proceeded through many years of fact and expert discovery. In 2021 through 2024, the plaintiffs settled with the defendants, the five largest chicken processing companies (Pilgrim’s Pride, Tyson, Sanderson Farms, Koch Foods, and Perdue). The plaintiffs achieved certification of a nationwide plaintiff class of chicken growers in 2024 and were preparing for trial when the plaintiffs settled with the last defendant in July 2024.

Berger Montague is one of the nation’s preeminent law firms focusing on complex civil litigation, class actions, and mass torts in federal and state courts throughout the United States. The firm is a national leader in the fields of antitrust, commercial litigation, consumer protection, defective products, environmental law, employment law, securities, and whistleblower cases, among many other practice areas. For more than 55 years, Berger Montague has played lead roles in precedent-setting cases and has recovered over $50 billion for its clients and the classes they have represented. Berger Montague is headquartered in Philadelphia and has offices in Chicago, Minneapolis, San Diego, San Francisco, Toronto, Washington, D.C., and Wilmington, DE.