Dive Brief:
- A judge has denied individual and joint motions by North American containerboard producers to dismiss a price-fixing lawsuit brought against them in July 2025. In October, numerous defendants collectively filed a motion to dismiss the case, while Pratt and Packaging Corporation of America also filed individually.
- Judge Mary M. Rowland did not agree with the defendants’ argument that the case should be thrown out because of plaintiff Artuso Pastry’s “failure to state a claim.” Defendants include Cascades, Georgia-Pacific, Greif, International Paper, Packaging Corporation of America, Pratt Industries, Smurfit Kappa and WestRock.
- This determination lifts the pause on proceeding with discovery. Defendants now have until Sept. 29 to answer the complaint, and the following week they must provide a joint status report with reasonable dates for discovery.
Dive Insight:
In the 49-page decision, Rowland conveyed there is enough evidence of a potential conspiracy in the plaintiff’s materials to warrant further exploration in a lawsuit.
“Considered as a whole, Plaintiff’s allegations are sufficient to make the inference of a conspiracy plausible,” she said. “Plaintiff’s well-pleaded allegations regarding six lockstep or nearly lockstep price increases are sufficient on their face to show parallel conduct.”
The judge repeatedly noted that it would be inappropriate for her to weigh both parties’ competing explanations for certain allegations in a motion to dismiss. Rather, such examinations could be part of the case going forward.
Rowland explained that “antitrust discovery can be expensive,” and plaintiffs bringing implausible allegations should not be permitted to abuse the system by waging frivolous cases. However, she considered the evidence presented to be credible enough that this case would not qualify as abusing the system.
The defendants said there were “obvious, nonconspiratorial explanations” for the concurrent price increases, including higher demand during the COVID-19 pandemic and input cost changes, especially for OCC. The judge didn’t believe the timeline for those factors meshed perfectly with that of the price increases.
“Defendants’ alternative explanations, increased demand and high input costs, do not track Defendants’ alleged price increases closely enough to furnish an obvious and comprehensive explanation of the alleged conspiracy,” Rowland said.
“The Containerboard industry has several characteristics that make it ripe for coordinated conduct,” she said. For one, the industry has undergone significant consolidation. The plaintiff says five main players now control at least 85% of the North American market, up from 42% in the mid-1990s. Such factors “make the Containerboard market more conducive to collusion” and add plausibility to the conspiracy claims, Rowland said.
Regarding PCA and Pratt’s separate motions to dismiss, those companies claimed there was not sufficient evidence to show they participated in collusion. However, Rowland said that “the Complaint contains sufficient specific allegations against Pratt and PCA to plausibly tie them to the conspiracy.”
Late last year, the court whittled down the list of defendants to 10 from the initial 12. Rowland dismissed Graphic Packaging International in September and Smurfit Westrock in October. The court did not provide reasons for the dismissals, and both companies have repeatedly declined to comment on litigation.
But observers have suggested that GPI was dismissed because its business is different from the other defendants. Its main customer base purchases GPI’s ready-made consumer packaging products, not containerboard.
As far as Smurfit Westrock’s dismissal, that’s likely because the entity did not exist for much of the time period in question. Instead, the companies that formed SW by merging in 2024 — Smurfit Kappa and WestRock — are still defendants in this case. Similar to the multiple mentions of various SW entities, three discrete Cascades entities are still named as defendants: Cascades Inc., Cascades USA Inc. and Cascades Holding US.
