Hormel Turkey Price-Fixing Settlement: The Claim Deadline for the $93.575 Million Pool Is October 30, 2026 — Every Direct Purchaser Must File a New Form, There Is No Second Opt-Out, and Grocery Shoppers Still Get Nothing

As of October 16, 2026, the Hormel turkey price-fixing settlement is in its claims period. The $37.5 million paid by Hormel Foods and its Jennie-O Turkey Store unit (called “JOTS” in the court papers) and the $34 million from Butterball were preliminarily approved by Judge Sunil R. Harjani on August 26, 2026. Notice went out from September 15, and, as trade press summarised the court’s schedule, “Class members will have until Oct. 30 to submit claims or objections, with a final fairness hearing scheduled for Nov. 24.” That matches the plaintiffs’ proposed timetable: the last day to file claim forms, objections or notices to appear is “45 days after the commencement of the Notice Plan.” The claim deadline is October 30, 2026.

The class is narrow. It covers “people and businesses that purchased fresh or frozen uncooked turkey breast, ground turkey or whole-bird turkey products directly from defendants between Jan. 1, 2010, and Dec. 31, 2016.” In practice that means distributors, wholesalers and the buying arms of grocery and food-service chains. Someone who bought a turkey at a supermarket bought it from the store, not from Hormel or Butterball, and is not in this class. There is no consumer claim form in this case.

For those who are in the class, the single most important instruction in the notice plan is this: “members of the Certified Class … need to submit a new claim form to claim funds from the settlements with Cooper Farms, Farbest Foods, House of Raeford, Prestage, JOTS, and Butterball.” A claim filed years ago in the Tyson or Cargill round does not carry over.

The direct purchasers have now settled with every remaining producer, for about $130.7 million in total. That money is split into two pots with two separate claims processes.

By our arithmetic the nine lines add to $130,725,000, the reported $130.7 million. The Tyson and Cargill money — $37.15 million, our sum — is not part of the current claims window. The court papers say it “will be distributed separately under an already concluded claims process” and is on hold “pending resolution of appeal” of the Cargill final approval order in the Seventh Circuit (Carina Ventures LLC v. Cargill). The notice also tells class members that the Tyson and Cargill claim deadline “has already passed, so no new claims may be filed for those settlements.” The new form exists because the later settlements use the narrower product definition of the class the court certified in January 2025.

Nobody is paid before the fairness hearing on November 24, 2026, and not immediately after it. The plan is to “make a distribution to Certified Class members in accordance with a plan to be filed after the claims process is carried out.” No payment date has been set.

That is the question searchers ask most, in the form “How much money will I get from a class action lawsuit?” For this case the honest answer is that nobody has published a per-claimant figure, and none can exist until the claims are in. The distribution is “pro rata”: each class member’s share depends on its own direct turkey purchases from the defendants measured against the purchases of everyone else who files. A regional distributor and a national chain can receive amounts that differ by orders of magnitude.

The one unit the court papers give is market share. Butterball’s payment “represents approximately $1.33 million per settlement class market share point.” That describes what Butterball paid relative to its share of the market, not what a buyer receives.

Several deductions come off the pool before anything is divided:

• Attorneys’ fees of “not to exceed 33 1/3% (including interest, net of costs).” On the $93,575,000 pool that is at most about $31.2 million, by our calculation; the actual request is set out in the fee motion.
• Litigation expenses — this is counsel’s third request for reimbursement.
• Service awards to the named plaintiffs, “not to exceed $25,000 per Class Representative.”
• Notice and administration: counsel may withdraw up to $250,000 from each settlement fund for notice and the claims process.

Fees already approved in the earlier round have not been paid either. The court granted an interim fee of $10,796,649.96 and expenses of $4,384,188.14 from the Tyson and Cargill funds on July 30, 2025; both are held, like the class’s share, until the Cargill appeal is resolved.

The October 16 and November 10 dates are our arithmetic from the intervals the plaintiffs proposed; we have not seen the order setting them. On October 15, 2026 the docket shows a motion for leave to file excess pages and an order granting it, which fits a brief arriving on schedule; we could not read it.

There is no second chance to opt out. Our September 4 report listed exclusions as due October 30; that was wrong, and we are correcting it here. The class was certified in January 2025 and, in the plaintiffs’ words, “the deadline for class members to request exclusion has run.” The motion asked that the settlement be approved “without an additional opportunity to opt out,” citing the court’s identical ruling for the July settlements. A class member who stayed in can object by October 30, 2026 or ask to speak at the hearing, but cannot leave the class now.

The hearing on November 24, 2026 covers more than Hormel and Butterball: it also takes up the settlements with Agri Stats, House of Raeford, Prestage, Foster Farms and Perdue, the last four preliminarily approved on July 30, 2026.

The court appointed A.B. Data, Ltd. as notice and claims administrator and The Huntington National Bank as escrow agent. The approved notice plan reaches class members by direct mail to known street addresses, direct email to known addresses, a publication campaign, and a case website with a toll-free number. The official website for the direct purchaser class is TurkeyLitigation.com. When we tried to read it on October 16, 2026 the site blocked automated access and pointed to a downloadable claim form that can be mailed in, so we cannot quote its current wording, phone number or mailing address here; take those from the site itself or from the mailed notice, not from a link in an unsolicited message.

Three checks before you respond to anything about a turkey settlement:

• Are you a direct purchaser? A message promising a household payout for turkey you bought at a store does not describe this case.
• Does it come from A.B. Data or point to TurkeyLitigation.com? The commercial-kitchen track below has its own site, TurkeyCommercialCase.com.
• Does it ask for a fee? Filing a claim in a court-supervised settlement costs nothing.

A related search, “Did I get overcharged for chicken in the lawsuit?”, is outside this page: this class is limited to uncooked turkey breast, ground turkey and whole-bird turkey, so chicken purchases do not count here. Broiler chicken is a different case with its own settlements.

The direct purchasers alleged that the major turkey producers “shared competitively sensitive information through Agri Stats Inc. as part of an illegal conspiracy to limit turkey supplies and fix prices.” These are allegations; the settlements “do not indicate that the defendants admitted wrongdoing or liability.” The case was filed on December 19, 2019.

In July 2026, on summary judgment, the court let the direct purchasers’ per se conspiracy claims against Prestage, JOTS and Butterball go forward, dismissed their rule-of-reason claims, and ruled for Foster Farms and Perdue. Hormel/JOTS and Butterball then settled within weeks, and the October 2026 jury trial was struck. Their deals are the final settlements resolving the direct purchasers’ claims.

Two other tracks continue. On August 26, 2026 the judge also preliminarily approved settlements between Perdue and Foster Farms and a separate class of commercial and institutional indirect purchasers — “entities in specified states that indirectly purchased uncooked turkey products for use in commercial food preparation during the 2010-2016 period.” Claims by direct action plaintiffs, companies that sued on their own, are not necessarily resolved by the Hormel and Butterball agreements either. None of these tracks is a consumer class.

We will report again after the November 24, 2026 fairness hearing and when a distribution plan is filed.