After three failed attempts at convicting poultry executives — and other recent court failures — one would be forgiven for thinking a more lax DOJ posture could be in the offing. Rick Kornfeld, one of the defense attorneys in the poultry price-fixing case, gives his insights into why a cocksure stance by the antitrust division is the new norm.
If nothing else, the DOJ’s antitrust division under Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter and Attorney General Merrick Garland is persistent. Despite a series of stinging rebukes by juries in Texas and Colorado, where the DOJ failed to convict various companies and executives in the poultry, dialysis and staffing industries, the division is nonetheless plowing forward with prosecutions of another group of chicken industry executives and two chicken producers in separate trials in federal court in Denver. The first of those trials, against two former executives of Pilgrim’s Pride, begins in late October.
I had a front-row seat to the DOJ’s stubborn insistence and its intransigence regarding antitrust enforcement. Along with my law partners, David Beller and Kelly Page, I represent one of the chicken executives acquitted of price-fixing and bid-rigging by a Denver jury in July.
Our case, U.S. v. Penn, et al. (20-cr-152 D. Colo.) originally involved…
