US: Court Lets Consumer Price-Fixing Case Against Four Frozen-Potato Makers Proceed
A federal court in Illinois has refused to dismiss most consumer claims that Lamb Weston, McCain, J.R. Simplot and Cavendish Farms coordinated prices for frozen potato products.
A federal court in Chicago has allowed the bulk of a consumer price-fixing case against North America’s four largest frozen-potato processors to proceed. The opinion and order, filed on 17 September 2026 in the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, denied most of the defendants’ motions to dismiss.
The defendants are Lamb Weston, McCain Foods (its US unit and Canadian parent), J.R. Simplot and Cavendish Farms. The case, consolidated as multidistrict litigation No. 3117, alleges that the companies coordinated price increases for frozen potato products such as fries, hash browns and tater tots from 2021 onwards.
According to the law firms representing consumers, the court trimmed only some state-law claims, while the federal claims under Section 1 of the Sherman Act survive. The court accepted that the plaintiffs had explained how an exchange of information could have facilitated price fixing. The complaint centres on PotatoTrack, a data service that the plaintiffs say was used by the four processors to share competitively sensitive information.
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The plaintiffs say the four companies control roughly 98% of the US frozen potato products market. That share is an allegation of the plaintiffs and has not been tested in court.
Claims from direct purchasers, commercial indirect purchasers and consumers were consolidated in 2025. The US Department of Justice filed a statement of interest in the case on 27 February 2026.
The ruling is not a finding of liability. At this stage the court only decides whether the allegations, if proven, would amount to a violation of the law. The case now moves towards discovery, in which the companies will have to disclose documents about how market information was shared.
The main public accounts of the ruling come from the two plaintiff law firms, Hagens Berman and Cohen Milstein, which are not neutral sources, and from the trade publication FreshPlaza. Reports from the firms give different names for the presiding judge, so potatoes.news does not name the judge until the order is checked.
Why it matters
Growers who supply these processors negotiate their contract prices with the same companies, so discovery into how market data was shared will be watched closely on the farm side as well as by food-service buyers, who are among the purchasers bringing claims.
Photo: Packs of frozen french fries in a supermarket freezer (illustrative). PaulGorduiz106 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
