18th Annual Workplace Class Action Report - 2022 Edition

Annual Workplace Class Action Litigation Report: 2022 Edition 745 House, et al. v. NCAA , 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 154062 (N.D. Cal. June 24, 2021). Plaintiffs in two consolidated class actions alleged that Defendants’ rules prohibiting student athletes from endorsing any commercial product or service while they are in school, from receiving compensation for their names, images, and likenesses (“NIL”) from outside employment, and from using their NIL to promote their own business ventures or engage in self- employment violated state and federal antitrust laws and common law. Plaintiffs asserted that without these rules, Defendants would allow student-athletes to take advantage of opportunities to profit from their NIL, and NCAA member conferences and schools would share with student-athletes the revenue they receive from third- parties for the commercial use of student-athletes’ NIL. Defendants filed a motion to dismiss, and the Court denied the motion. The Court found that Plaintiffs adequately pled a relevant market to assert a viable antitrust claim, as well as injury to competition in that market. Id . at *30. Plaintiffs alleged that the relevant market was the nationwide market for the labor of Division I college athletes, and because Division I members had overwhelming market power as a result of the absence of reasonable substitutes for the opportunities offered by Division I members, the challenged rules allowed Division I members to suppress competition that would otherwise exist among them by artificially fixing the price of the bundle of goods and services offered to student- athletes. Id . at *30-31. Plaintiffs contended that without the rules, competition among Division I members would increase. The injury to competition that Plaintiffs alleged would be the artificial suppression of the price of the bundle of goods and services that student-athletes could receive in exchange for their labor and the right to use their NIL within the nationwide labor market described in the complaint. Id . at *31. The Court found Plaintiffs’ alleged injury was cognizable and sufficient to survive a motion to dismiss. For these reasons, the Court denied Defendants’ motion. In Re Broiler Chicken Antitrust Litigation , 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 102550 (N.D. Ill. June 1, 2021). I n this consolidated antitrust class action litigation involving claims that poultry producers manipulated the supply of chicken to keep the prices artificially high, Plaintiffs alleged that Rabobank, a bank, conspired with Defendants in the poultry industry to limit the supply of chicken meat in violation of the § 1 of the Sherman Act. Rabobank moved to dismiss for failure to state a claim pursuant to Rule 12(b)(6). The Court granted the motion. The Court previously had held that Plaintiffs plausibly alleged a conspiracy in the poultry production industry to limit supplies in order to increase the price of chicken, and that an industry analyst, Agri Stats, acted as a co- conspirator by being a conduit of information and communication among chicken producers. Id. at *44. Plaintiffs alleged that Rabobank played a similar role. Plaintiff pointed to emails in which a Rabobank director stated that he relayed communications between Defendants Perdue and Pilgrim’s Pride. The Court, however, determined that the mere possibility that the subject matter of Rabobank’s communications was the alleged conspiracy to reduce supplies was insufficient to state a viable claim. The Court determined that there was no factual basis regarding Rabobank’s communications with Defendants from which the Court could infer that those communications concerned the alleged supply reduction conspiracy. Accordingly, the Court granted Rabobank’s motion to dismiss. Jien, et al. v. Perdue Farms, Inc., 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 45331 (D. Md. May 10, 2021). Plaintiffs filed a class action against 14 poultry processors and their subsidiaries. Approximately 220,000 workers were employed by Defendants. Because Defendants produced commodity poultry products in a similarly efficient and vertically integrated manner, their poultry processing facilities were characterized by highly similar operations, and thus highly similar labor requirements. Plaintiffs’ complaint alleged two counts of violations of § 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act for a conspiracy to depress wages, and a conspiracy to exchange compensation information. Plaintiffs alleged that hourly wages for poultry processors were low, and the work was grueling and often dangerous. Further, because the poultry processing industry relied upon entry-level employees from vulnerable populations, including migrant workers, refugees, asylum-seekers, Plaintiffs alleged that Defendants had conspired to fix and depress the compensation paid to employees by engaging in secret annual meetings and sharing compensation information. Defendants filed four motions to dismiss seeking to narrow the scope of the class action because Plaintiffs only worked as hourly employees at chicken processing plants, and thus allegedly lack standing to pursue claims related to salaried positions or workers in turkey processing plants. Defendants also argued that Plaintiffs failed to provide sufficient details about how the companies were involved in the alleged conspiracy. The Court denied the motions. The Court reasoned that Plaintiffs sufficiently pled the existence of a singular poultry labor market, irrespective of whether the workers were salaried or hourly, or worked with chicken or turkey. Id . at *16. The Court therefore found that Plaintiffs’ complaint sufficiently