Seeger Weiss Co-Interim Class Counsels Against Monsanto For Fixing Seed Prices
Seeger Weiss LLP currently serves as one of the two Co-Interim Class Counsel appointed by Judge E. Richard Webber of the U.S. District Court in St. Louis. The cases involve consolidated suits against Monsanto Company; Pioneer Hi-Bred International, Inc.; and E.I. DuPont de Nemours and Company, which were originally filed in the state courts of Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Wisconsin, and later removed to Federal court. Plaintiffs, who are soybean or corn farmers and who purchased seeds containing Monsanto's 'Roundup Ready' and 'YieldGard' genetically-modified soybean and corn seed technologies, assert claims under state and federal antitrust laws, state unfair trade practices statutes, and common law unjust enrichment, specially alleging that Monsanto and its Co-Defendants licensees of its genetically-modified soybean and corn seed technologies, have conspired to fix seed prices and to monopolize the market for those technologies, resulting in supra-competitive prices paid by farmers.
In March 2005, Seeger Weiss obtained summary judgment dismissing Monsanto's ham-fisted retaliatory suit against the farmer plaintiffs, in which Monsanto had claimed that the farmers' filing of their claims in their home state courts instead of Missouri federal or state court had violated a forum selection clause in the Technology Use Agreement that each farmer had signed at the time of his seed purchases, and thereby amounted to an infringement of Monsanto's patents. In rejecting Monsanto's theory, the court characterized it as 'unconscionable and unreasonable.' More recently, in September 2007, after extensive briefing and argument, including post-argument briefing, Judge Webber sustained most of the Counts in Plaintiffs' 385-page Master Consolidated Amended Class Action Complaint. Following motions for clarification of the court's ruling filed by both sides and extensive negotiations over the provisions of a series of detailed case management orders, discovery will cover the production of well over 1 million pages of documents, numerous depositions, and extensive expert reports and depositions' is now underway, and Plaintiffs' motion for class certification is expected to be fully briefed and argued over the course of the coming 15-16 months.
