At Cirque Analytics, we pride ourselves on delivering rigorous economic analysis to support complex litigation, and few cases exemplify the impact of our expertise like In re Packaged Seafood Products Antitrust Litigation. This multidistrict litigation, centered in the Southern District of California, has become a landmark antitrust case, exposing price-fixing conspiracies among major packaged tuna manufacturers—StarKist, Bumble Bee, and Chicken of the Sea. With guilty pleas from key defendants and settlements reshaping the industry, the case underscores the critical role economic consulting plays in uncovering market manipulation and securing justice for affected parties. The team, led by Dr. Russell Mangum III and supported by D. Scott Bosworth and Anna Laaks, was instrumental in helping achieve class certification—a pivotal milestone in the litigation—and assisting class counsel in multiple rounds of appeals.
The packaged seafood case began in 2015 when the U.S. Department of Justice’s investigation into a proposed merger between Thai Union Group (Chicken of the Sea’s parent) and Bumble Bee revealed evidence of anticompetitive conduct. What followed was a cascade of civil lawsuits alleging that these industry giants colluded to fix prices of shelf-stable tuna, harming direct purchasers, commercial food preparers, and end payers. The stakes were high: the conspiracy affected a multi-billion-dollar market, impacting everyone from grocery chains to consumers. Our team was retained by Hausfeld LLP to work on behalf of a proposed class of direct purchasers and was tasked with analyzing vast datasets—transactional sales records, pricing trends, costs, and market dynamics—to quantify damages and prove the conspiracy’s class-wide impact. The case’s significance lies not only in its scale but also in its demonstration of how economic expertise can hold powerful corporations accountable, reinforcing the deterrent effect of antitrust law.
Dr. Mangum, a seasoned economist and Executive Vice President at Cirque Analytics, played a central role in securing class certification for the direct purchaser plaintiffs in July 2019. Tasked with demonstrating that the alleged price-fixing had a common impact across the class, Dr. Mangum and his team designed a sophisticated econometric model to analyze tuna pricing during the conspiracy period versus a competitive benchmark. His report tackled two key questions: whether the cartel’s actions affected all class members and how damages could be reliably estimated. The team not only proved the existence of an overcharge, but also demonstrated how the econometric model was robust across economically meaningful subsets of the data, including different packaging and types of tuna, different customer types, and across suppliers. Facing challenges from defendants—who argued his methodology overstated impact or included uninjured parties—Dr. Mangum and his team expertly illustrated for the court how defendants’ experts’ excessive disaggregation of the data produced unreliable results, and highlighted other fatal flaws in their purported testing methodologies. Despite repeated attempts to appeal, Dr. Mangum’s econometric analysis and testimony was critical to the district and appellate courts’ approval of the class being certified. His work exemplifies how economic consultants translate raw data into compelling legal evidence, bridging the gap between complex markets and courtroom clarity.
After extensive negotiations with defendants, this matter ultimately settled just prior to trial in mid-2024. At Cirque Analytics, we see the packaged seafood (or “tuna”) case as a testament to the power of economic analysis in litigation and of the skill and expertise we provide to our clients. The tuna case, and the contribution of Dr. Mangum and his team in particular, has been frequently cited in numerous other subsequent courts in their decisions to certify other classes, thereby setting a precedent for how econometric modeling can withstand intense scrutiny in antitrust disputes. In recognition of the team’s work, the American Antitrust Institute honored Dr. Mangum, Mr. Bosworth, and Anna Laaks with their 2023 award for Outstanding Antitrust Litigation Achievement in Economics.