Judge rejects motion to recuse in Agri Stats DOJ case

A Minnesota federal judge has once again denied a motion to recuse himself from a case surrounding benchmarking reports and meat price-fixing claims. U.S. District Judge John Tunheim dismissed Agri Stats’ argument that a law clerk who worked on In re Pork antitrust litigation had a conflict and the conflict should be imputed to the judge because the cases are related.

Ruling in United States v. Agri Stats, Judge Tunheim stated the motion was denied because the court “had already found that the law clerk had no conflict in In re Pork; even if the law clerk had a conflict, it would not be imputed to the judge; and, finally, no alleged conflict extends to this case.”

The original motion, brought forth by defendants Clemens Food Group, Smithfield Foods, Tyson Foods, Seaboard Foods, Triumph Foods and Agri Stats in In re Pork, was based on the argument that one of the court’s law clerks exhibited bias. The defendants had argued recusal and vacatur were necessary due to the law clerk’s bias since he had worked for three different entities suing protein producers for antitrust violations based on Agri Stats, and the clerk also had a pending offer of employment from one of the leading plaintiffs’ firms in the protein/Agri Stats antitrust cases.

The pork processors and Agri Stats also claimed the clerk shared a social media post that both announced that one of his former employers was suing Agri Stats and explicitly identified this case. They also contended that immediately following oral argument on the Daubert motions, the clerk “publicly embraced plaintiffs’ attorneys in this case in the courtroom.”