Are you paying too much for canned tuna?  If you ask several big name grocery stores, then the answer is yes.

Many large supermarkets say that canned tuna makers teamed up to fix prices on the product, ultimately causing consumers to pay higher prices.

A slew of U.S.-based grocery chains such as Winn-Dixie, Giant Eagle, Kroger, Albertsons, Hy-Vee and H.E. Butt (HEB) and others have filed eight separate federal antitrust lawsuits against canned tuna manufacturers in the recent months.

These lawsuits allege that three “big” tuna companies had been conspiring to fix canned tuna prices since 2010, and continued to do so until at least July of last year, a scheme that has trickled down to consumers’ pockets.

“During this period, there was a large increase in the supply of canning-grade tuna coupled with decreasing US demand for canned tuna,” state court documents.

As such, tuna prices should have gone down, however, prices instead increased significantly, the grocers say.

“In this environment, defendants’ and their co-conspirators’ canned tuna price increases and resistance to normal supply-demand pressures would have been against their self-interest unless they were colluding,” one tuna lawsuit states.

All of these supermarket-initiated lawsuits make the same similar claims: That the three tuna companies – Bumble Bee Foods, StarKist and Tri-Union Seafoods (which distributes tuna in the U.S. under the brand Chicken of the Sea on behalf of its parent company, Thai Union Frozen Products) together improperly used their position to unfairly regulate the prices of their canned tuna products.

The grocers cite data showing that consumption of these tuna products has declined in the United States in recent years, and that prices of tuna products from the defendant companies do not reflect the drop in demand.

“These price increases since the beginning of 2000 were a direct result of defendants’ conspiracy to restrict capacity, allocate customers, and fix the prices of packaged seafood in the United States. As a result, plaintiff … paid artificially inflated prices for packaged seafood purchased from the defendants,” another tuna lawsuit contends.

The supermarkets also argue the tuna makers had opportunities for collusion through a joint “Tuna the Wonderfish” marketing campaign by co-packing Bumble Bee and Chicken of the Sea tuna and by teaming up in the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation.

And it is this alleged pricing fixing conspiracy that has consumers paying too much for canned tuna, according to plaintiffs’ claims.

Canned Tuna Lawsuits

Big grocery chains are not the only ones filing lawsuits against the canned tuna companies.  As consumers become aware of the alleged deceptive actions of the tuna manufacturers, many are opting to file their own claims or class action lawsuits.

One consumer class action tuna lawsuit, filed by a Florida resident in August 2015, alleges Bumble Bee, StarKist and Tri-Union conspired to keep prices higher despite noted declines in consumption of canned and pouched tuna in the United States.

While unrelated to the canned tuna price-fixing lawsuits, Starkist recently settled a 2013 class action tuna lawsuit, resolving claims that the company under-filled certain tuna products in direct violation of federal laws.

Do YOU have a legal claim? Fill out the form on this page now for a free, immediate, and confidential case evaluation. The attorneys who work with Top Class Actions will contact you if you qualify to let you know if an individual tuna lawsuit or tuna class action lawsuit is best for you. Hurry — statutes of limitations may apply.