An Illinois federal judge has allowed proposed antitrust claims alleging price coordination and competitor-data sharing in the frozen potato market to move into discovery against four producers and data provider Circana.
In a Sept. 17 order, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey I. Cummings denied separate dismissal motions from McCain Foods Limited and Circana on federal claims alleging price fixing and unlawful information exchange. He dismissed some state-law claims, including an indirect purchaser’s South Dakota antitrust claim and certain commercial-purchaser consumer-protection claims, and lifted the discovery stay. The ruling addressed whether the allegations could proceed, not whether the companies were liable.
The case also names Lamb Weston, J.R. Simplot and Cavendish as producers. Plaintiffs say participants sent weekly company sales and volume figures to Circana’s PotatoTrack service. They allege subscribers could compare their own figures with those of the other three producers, with reports broken down by product category and region.
Plaintiffs estimate the U.S. frozen potato products market was worth about $68 billion in 2023 and allege the four producers held a combined 98% share. Their complaints say prices rose 62% from January 2022 to December 2024, while producers’ input costs fell 33% from October 2023 through at least mid-2025. The court cited these figures as allegations, not findings. Proposed classes include direct purchasers, commercial buyers using intermediaries and consumers. Plaintiffs allege buyers paid inflated prices and producers gained through higher margins; neither losses nor benefits have been established.
The companies argued that pandemic-era cost increases had compressed margins and offered an alternative explanation for their pricing. Cummings said that argument did not make the conspiracy claims implausible at this stage, writing that producers facing those conditions had “an even greater incentive to conspire to fix prices.” The court’s account of the complaints also cites alleged barriers to entry and access to competitors’ data. It says Lamb Weston, McCain and J.R. Simplot together held 80% of the market in 2001.
The U.S. Department of Justice filed a statement of interest on Feb. 27, urging the court to reject categorical rules that aggregated, anonymized or backward-looking data cannot harm competition and to assess the specific facts of the case.
The parties must file a joint status report by Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2026, proposing a schedule for fact and expert discovery and updating the court on settlement talks. A tracking hearing is set for Dec. 1, 2026.
