StarKist tuna on sale. Credit: The Image Party / Shutterstock.com

StarKist and the former owner of Bumble Bee Foods have reached a settlement in a civil lawsuit in the US over alleged price-fixing of canned tuna.

On Tuesday (25 June), US seafood business StarKist, along with its South Korean parent company, Dongwon Industries, and Lion Capital, which owned Bumble Bee before it went bankrupt in 2019, settled their suits with end-payer and direct-purchaser plaintiffs, according to a filing in the US District Court for the Southern District of California.

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StarKist faced charges of colluding to fix the price of canned tuna from late 2011 to late 2013 under an investigation by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) and pleaded guilty to the charges in 2018.

Bumble Bee also previously admitted the charges and submitted a guilty plea.

Terms of the proposed settlement were not disclosed. The plaintiffs had been seeking up to $1bn in damages.

US Magistrate Judge Michael S. Berg gave both plaintiff classes until 25 July to make motions for preliminary approval of the settlement.

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In 2019, StarKist was ordered to pay a $100m fine after admitting its guilt in the case, which saw Thai Union emerge as the company that exposed the price-fixing saga.

Allegations tuna suppliers in the US had fixed prices emerged in 2015. A lawyer for one of the plaintiffs suggested at the time “suspicious activity” could have emerged when the DOJ reviewed the potential impact on competition of Thai Union’s move to buy rival US supplier Bumble Bee, which was announced in late 2014. Thai Union called off the planned deal in December 2015.

In 2020, Bumble Bee Foods’ former chief executive Chris Lischewski was jailed by a San Francisco judge for more than three years for his role in the conspiracy.

Lischewski was formally charged in May 2018 by a federal grand jury in San Francisco, and then underwent a four-week trial the following year.

He was reportedly released last year.