Hormel Turkey Price-Fixing Settlement: Claims Due October 30, 2026
- Claim deadline
- Oct 30, 2026
- Fairness hearing
- Nov 24, 2026
By Settlement Insight Data Desk · Reviewed by Leonard GoldbergPublished
Hormel Turkey Price-Fixing Settlement: Claims for the $93,575,000 Pool Are Due October 30, 2026 — the Fee Request Was Filed October 16, the Judge Ruled on Tyson and Cooper Farms October 19, and Hormel Says It Is Still Fighting the Rest
Does this affect you?
AI Legal Assistant · free · answers in seconds · general information, not legal advice
The short answer as of October 22, 2026
If your business bought fresh or frozen, uncooked turkey — breast, ground turkey or whole birds — directly from one of the turkey producers between January 1, 2010 and December 31, 2016, you are probably a member of the certified direct purchaser class, and the deadline to file a claim for the $93,575,000 pool is October 30, 2026. That pool is made up of the Hormel Foods / Jennie-O Turkey Store settlement ($37,500,000), Butterball ($34,000,000), Prestage ($15,000,000), House of Raeford ($3,700,000), and Cooper Farms and Farbest Foods ($1,687,500 each), according to the plaintiffs’ August 21, 2026 court filing.
If you bought a Jennie-O or Butterball turkey at a supermarket, this settlement does not include you. The class is limited to direct purchasers — distributors, retailers, food-service companies and other businesses that bought from the producers themselves. There is no consumer class in this case and no form for household shoppers. Judge Harjani gave preliminary approval to the Butterball and Hormel/Jennie-O deals on August 26, 2026, which ended the need for the direct purchasers’ trial; the final approval hearing is set for November 24, 2026.
What changed since mid-October: the fee motion and the October 19 ruling
The fee request is on file. Under the schedule the plaintiffs proposed, class counsel had to file their motion for attorneys’ fees, expenses and service awards 14 days before the claims and objections deadline. Our case database shows an “Attorney Fees” entry, Dkt. 1983, on October 16, 2026. We could not read the motion itself, so we cannot report the dollar amount. What the notice plan already fixed is the ceiling: fees “not to exceed 33 1/3% (including interest, net of costs)” and service awards “not to exceed $25,000 per Class Representative.” At the full 33 1/3%, about a third of the pool would go to counsel before class members are paid, by our arithmetic. Objections to the fee motion are due on the same day as claims: October 30, 2026.
Tyson and Cooper Farms will have to keep defending. On October 19, 2026 Judge Harjani ruled on summary judgment motions in another part of the litigation. Meatingplace reported that he “partially” granted summary judgment to Tyson and Cooper Farms and granted the motions filed by Farbest, House of Raeford and Agri Stats. He found enough evidence for a jury to consider whether Tyson took part in an agreement to restrict turkey supplies, but dismissed claims about Tyson’s conduct before 2012. Tyson only entered first-level turkey processing through its 2014 acquisition of Hillshire Brands. Tyson and Cooper Farms had already settled with the direct purchaser class, so by our reading this ruling concerns the plaintiffs that stayed outside that class. It does not change your claim or the October 30 deadline.
Who gets what, and how much
The direct purchaser money is split pro rata by each claimant’s purchases. Nobody has published a per-claimant estimate, and nobody can until the claims are counted. That answers a common search question, How much are people getting from the poultry settlement?: for this turkey pool, the amount depends on how much turkey your business bought from the defendants, and no figure has been announced. Payment comes only after final approval and a distribution plan, which class counsel will file after the claims process ends. If there is money left after the distribution (and any second distribution), the notice names the American Antitrust Institute as a possible cy pres recipient.
Two older settlements are handled separately. Tyson ($4,650,000) and Cargill ($32,500,000) were settled before the class was certified, and the claims process for them closed long ago. Their money is held until the Seventh Circuit decides an appeal of the Cargill approval (No. 25-2656). So is an earlier interim fee award of $10,796,649.96 and $4,384,188.14 in expenses, which the filing says “has not been made.” Butterball’s $34 million plus the $96.7 million from earlier settlements brings the class’s total recovery to about $130.7 million.
What to do before October 30, 2026
- File a new claim form, even if you filed before. The court filing says class members “need to submit a new claim form” for the Cooper Farms, Farbest, House of Raeford, Prestage, Hormel/Jennie-O and Butterball money. The earlier Tyson and Cargill forms used a broader product definition, so they do not carry over.
- Check the pre-printed numbers. Known purchasers get a claim form pre-filled from the defendants’ sales data. If your figures look too low, the Purchase Audit Request Form is the way to supplement or challenge them.
- Do not look for an opt-out. The class was certified on January 22, 2025, and the exclusion deadline ran long ago. The court decided that a second opt-out was not warranted. You can still object to the settlements or the fee request by October 30, 2026, and you can file a notice to appear at the November 24 hearing.
- Where to file: the administrator is A.B. Data, Ltd. at TurkeyLitigation.com, toll-free 877-777-9637 (English and Spanish). The site blocked our automated access on October 16 and again on October 22. If it does the same to you, use the toll-free phone line.
Is the notice real, or is it a scam?
The notice plan approved by the court uses direct mail to known street addresses and email to known email addresses of likely class members, plus trade-press advertising. A real notice points you to TurkeyLitigation.com and the 877-777-9637 number. It asks for your company’s turkey purchases, not for a fee. Nobody needs to pay to file. If you are a consumer and got a message saying you are owed money from the turkey price-fixing settlement, be skeptical: this case has no consumer payout. The commercial and institutional indirect purchaser class is a separate group, made up of businesses that bought turkey through middlemen to prepare food. It has its own site, TurkeyCommercialCase.com, and is not part of the Hormel direct purchaser deal.
Context: Hormel paid, but Hormel has not finished with the case
Hormel’s quarterly report for the period ending July 26, 2026 describes the settlement in its own words. It says the company “strongly denies liability” and settled “to avoid the uncertainty, risk, expense, and distraction of continued litigation.” It recorded the $37.5 million as an accrued expense in the third quarter of fiscal 2026. The same filing says: “The Company continues to defend against claims brought by the direct-action plaintiffs and the class of indirect purchasers. The Company has not recorded any liability for these remaining matters as it does not believe a loss is probable.” The complaints, filed beginning in December 2019, allege that from at least 2010 to 2017 the producers conspired to fix turkey prices, including through the benchmarking service Agri Stats. Those are allegations; settling is not an admission. Separately, Hormel sold its whole-bird turkey business on April 24, 2026.
This settlement covers turkey only. Searches for it often turn up the pork and chicken price-fixing cases, but those are different lawsuits against different companies, with their own deadlines. A turkey claim does nothing for them, and they do nothing for a turkey claim. Our pork and chicken coverage is linked below.
