World’s biggest salmon farming companies face federal class-action lawsuit.
Since 2019, a spate of lawsuits has been directed at suing some of the world’s biggest salmon farmers.
The latest development from the case is that the salmon producers must now face the allegations.
Bloomberg reports that the defendants denied these claims and moved to dismiss the lawsuit, but in a decision issued on Tuesday in Miami, Florida United States District Judge Cecilia M. Altonaga ruled that the case can move forward.
These include Mowi, SalMar, Lerøy, Bremnes and exporter Ocean Quality. Ocean Quality was the sales organisation of Grieg Seafood and Bremnes Seashore before it was closed.
According to the proposed class action filed in Miami federal court in April 2020, the lawsuits accuse the companies of allegedly conspiring to fix the price of salmon by “coordinating sales prices, exchanging commercially sensitive information, agreeing to buy products from competitors when these sell at low prices and coordinating a strategy to increase spot prices to achieve higher prices for longterm contracts”.
Last year, in court papers filed in a Miami federal court, the salmon farmers claimed that the antitrust lawsuit relies on “vague allegations of unspecified conduct by unspecified defendants at unspecified times, which are insufficient as a matter of law to state a claim”.
