A McCurtain County, Oklahoma, jury returned a $7.3 million verdict last month against Tyson Foods.The jury found that Tyson defrauded a group of 10 McCurtain County chicken growers through verbal and financial pressure to borrow hundreds of thousands of dollars to construct new chicken houses, along with other deceptive business practices.

“I heard several comments that it was a long time coming. Maybe this will make Tyson change the way they have been treating their growers,” Tony Benson, local attorney for the suing growers, told the Associated Press.

Tyson officials released a livid statement indicating their intent to appeal. In May 2008 more than 50 McCurtain County growers file suit against Tyson, but the case was later split into multiple smaller trials, and this decision came at the conclusion of the first trial.

With more McCurtain County lawsuits looming, Tyson’s public relations turned to some of the same deception and coercion that got the company in hot water, but this time their target was the residents of McCurtain County. Tyson’s statement sought to remind local residents of the company’s economic dominance in the county, and threatened that they might take their “investments” elsewhere.

The Justice Department stumbled through the opening phase of their dairy antitrust case against Dean Foods. Dean had previously filed a motion to dismiss the case, asserting that Justice did not provide sufficient evidence to support their antitrust claim. On April 7, J.P. Stadtmueller, U.S. District Court Judge for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, ruled against Dean’s motion to dismiss, but not without first offering some healthy criticism of the Justice Department.

“In today’s world, structural issues, together with a lack of specificity in content associated with the underlying complaint, simply do not measure up to that which any court would reasonably expect in draftsmanship from an experienced litigator. That said, the court finds these shortcomings not to be of sufficient magnitude to warrant either dismissal or a more definite statement,” wrote Judge Stadtmueller. Family farmers and ranchers need and deserve a better showing in this landmark case than Justice has provided so far.

Contact: John Crabtree, johnc@cfra.org or 402.687.2103 x 1010 for more information.