Legal News

Oregon fishermen sue to break up seafood company

By (News)

Two Oregon fishermen from Brookings and an antitrust lawyer from Portland have filed a class-action lawsuit in federal court in Medford in an effort to break up a giant seafood company.

Lloyd Whaley and his son Todd, along with attorney Michael Haglund, seek up to $520 million in damages and a slew of injunctions that would effectively end Pacific Seafood Group's dominant role in the West Coast fish business, The Register-Guard newspaper in Eugene reported.

Economists, seafood industry experts and individual skippers claim that Pacific Seafood has built up a monopoly in the West Coast's four most lucrative fisheries: dungeness crab, shrimp, groundfish and whiting.

Pacific Seafood attorney Craig Urness called the lawsuit "completely without merit" and said the company will "aggressively" defend itself.

Frank Dulcich, president and CEO of Pacific Seafood, runs a billion-dollar company that has become the nation's No. 1 fish buyer, according to Seafood Business Magazine.

Full post as published by Daily Bar News on March 16, 2011 (boomark / email).