On June 2, a grand jury in the District of Colorado filed an indictment against four chicken suppliers charging them with a “per se unlawful, and thus unreasonable, restraint of interstate trade and commerce in violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act.” The indictment asserted that the suppliers “entered into and engaged in a continuing combination and conspiracy to suppress and eliminate competition by rigging bids and fixing prices and other price-related terms for broiler chicken products in the United States.”
Section 1 of the Sherman Act, found at 15 U.S.C. Sec. 1, makes it a felony to engage in a conspiracy that restrains trade or commerce across state lines. The indictment alleged that the conspiracy derived from the following actions by the suppliers: (1) “reach[ing] agreements and understandings to submit aligned, though not necessarily identical, bids and to offer aligned, though not necessarily identical, prices, and price related terms, including discount levels, for broiler chicken products sold in the United States”; (2) participating “in conversations and communications relating to non-public information such as bids, prices, and price-related terms, including discount levels, for broiler chicken products sold in the United States with the shared understanding that the purpose of the conversations was to rig bids, and to fix, maintain, stabilize, and raise prices and other price-related terms, including discount levels, for broiler chicken products sold in the United States”; and (3) monitoring “bids submitted by, and prices and price-related terms, including discount levels, offered by, suppliers and co-conspirators for broiler chicken products sold in the United States.”
Subsequent to the alleged actions above, the indictment concluded that the suppliers met the legal standard for a violation under 15 U.S.C. Sec. 1, by not only completing the actions but by engaging in said actions while (1) “within the flow of” and while “substantially affect[ing]…”interstate trade and commerce” via the shipment of “substantial quantities of broiler chicken products by truck in a continuous and uninterrupted flow of interstate trade and commerce to companies located in states outside the place of origin of the shipments”; (2) engaging in discussions to “protect…the purpose and effectiveness of the conspiracy”; and (3) selling and accepting “payment for broiler chicken products that are the subject of the allegations….”
If convicted, the suppliers could face personal fines of up to one million dollars, business fines of up to one hundred million dollars, and “imprisonment not exceeding 10 years.”
