Treehouse Foods, Inc. v. Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Inc.
- Vernon Broderick
- 1:14-cv-00905
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Treehouse Foods v. Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Judge Broderick denied the competitors’ settlement objection for lack of standing and granted a motion to seal.
The ruling affected TreeHouse Foods, Bay Valley Foods, Sturm Foods, and JBR, which sought to object to the proposed settlement, as well as the parties to that settlement and the filing covered by the granted sealing motion.
What happened
In Treehouse Foods, Inc. v. Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Inc., TreeHouse Foods, Bay Valley Foods, Sturm Foods, and JBR objected conditionally to a proposed settlement involving indirect purchasers and Keurig Green Mountain, Inc.
The competitors’ filing also formally said that they were opting out of the proposed settlement. The court explained that parties who opt out lose the legal right to object to the settlement.
The court denied the competitors’ objection for lack of standing and granted the motion to seal Document 1328. Judge Vernon S. Broderick issued the order.
The detailed version
- Treehouse Foods, Inc. v. Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Inc. · No. 1:14-cv-00905
- Vernon Broderick
- May 26, 2021
Background
The order concerns related actions in the multidistrict litigation titled In re: Keurig Green Mountain Single-Serve Coffee Antitrust Litigation. TreeHouse Foods, Inc., Bay Valley Foods, LLC, and Sturm Foods, Inc., collectively called “TreeHouse,” and JBR, Inc., collectively called the “Competitor Plaintiffs,” submitted a conditional objection to a proposed settlement between the indirect purchaser plaintiffs and Keurig Green Mountain, Inc.
The Competitor Plaintiffs’ filing also stated that it was a formal notice that they were opting out of the proposed settlement. Keurig and the indirect purchaser plaintiffs filed responses opposing the objection.
Court’s reasoning
The court stated that class members who opt out of a settlement lose the ability to object to it and no longer have standing—the legal right to bring that challenge. Because the Competitor Plaintiffs had formally notified the court that they were opting out, the court concluded that their objection could not be considered.
Rulings
The court denied for lack of standing the Competitor Plaintiffs’ conditional objection at Document 1326. The court separately granted the motion to seal at Document 1328. Judge Vernon S. Broderick signed the order on May 26, 2021.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.