March 21, 2023 — A crab fisherman in the U.S. state of California has sued Pacific Seafood alleging it has “artificially suppressed” the price paid to fishermen for Dungeness crab.
The fisherman, Brad Little, filed the suit in a federal court in San Francisco, California, alleging he and 1,400 other commercial crab fishermen in California, Oregon, and Washington were paid lower prices for crab due to a price-fixing scheme perpetrated by Pacific Seafood. The complaint alleges Pacific Seafood fixed the price of crab through a “multipronged strategy of monopsonization, coercion, dumping, and secret deals.”