SAN DIEGO (CN) — Canned tuna fish giants StarKist, Bumble Bee Foods and their parent companies will fork over more than $216 million to settle claims that they colluded to overcharge consumers and grocery distributors for their products after a federal judge in San Diego agreed on Friday to approve two settlements.
The first settlement deals with claims brought by a class of consumers around the country who bought StarKist products from 2011 to 2015 against Starkist’s parent company Dongwon Industries and Bumble Bee Foods and the private equity firm that owns them, Lion Capital.
The plaintiffs’ share of the settlement will be $152.2 million.
On Friday U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw, a George W. Bush appointee, agreed to sign off on a settlement granting the consumers $130 million after a fairness hearing was held on Friday.
In July 2022, the court granted approval of a partial settlement with another heavy hitter in the tuna world — with Chicken of the Sea and its parent Thai Union Group, pushing the consumer classes’ final settlement to $152.2 million.
The second settlement finalizes claims brought by hundreds of national retailers and grocery stores — like Olean Wholesale Grocery Cooperative, and Pacific Groservice Inc., which does business as PITCO Foods and Piggly Wiggly Alabama Distributing Co., Inc — for $64.7 million.
“We’re grateful to be able to achieve this settlement for consumers,” said Mark C. Rifkin of Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz LLP, an attorney for the consumer class. “It was a great and hard fought result.”
The case stretches back to 2015 when Olean Wholesale Grocery Cooperative filed a class action in San Diego. Dozens of lawsuits over price-fixing by the three biggest packed-seafood companies then trickled into San Diego Federal Court after being transferred from other courts across the country.
The three companies control 73% of the U.S. market: Bumble Bee, 29%; StarKist, 25.3%; and Tri-Union, 18.4%, according to the complaint.
In 2016, The U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division filed an unopposed motion to intervene in the litigation, seeking a limited stay of discovery to aid in a federal grand jury investigation in the Northern District of California into whether the canned tuna companies violated the Sherman Act by conspiring to fix prices.
Bumble Bee pleaded guilty to criminal charges in 2017 for price-fixing canned tuna.
Both Bumble Bee and Tri-Union Seafoods, which makes Chicken of the Sea brand shelf-stable tuna, are headquartered in San Diego — once the tuna-fishing capital of the world.
Representatives of Bumble Bee, StarKist and Lion Capital did not immediately respond to requests for comment.