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District Court Denies Cardboard-Makers’ Motion To Dismiss In Price-Fixing Class Action
09/22/2026On September 4, 2026, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois denied motions to dismiss claims against major containerboard manufacturers accused of conspiring to fix the prices of containerboard products in violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act. Artuso Pastry Foods Corp. v. Packaging Corp. of America et al., No. 1:25-cv-08856 (N.D. Ill. Sept. 4, 2026).
In July 2025, direct purchasers of containerboard products filed a class action complaint against twelve containerboard manufacturers. Plaintiffs allege that, beginning in November 2020, defendants engaged in a per se unlawful conspiracy to fix, raise, and maintain supracompetitive prices for containerboard sheets, linerboard sheets, and finished packaging products through at least seven rounds of parallel price increases that collectively raised prices by approximately 30%. As “plus factors” to support an inference of a conspiracy, plaintiffs allege that the containerboard products market is highly concentrated—with defendants controlling 85% or more of the market—has a history of recidivist antitrust violations, and offers ample opportunities to collude through trade association meetings. Separately, plaintiffs further alleged that three defendants closed mills and adopted a “value-over-volume” strategy that restricted output and increased prices.
In their joint motion to dismiss, defendants argued that the complaint failed to plausibly allege an unlawful agreement and that their similar pricing was the product of independent, rational conduct. First, defendants denied price parallelism by alleging that defendants had sufficient price variations for a given product type at any given time. Next, defendants argued that the price increases were adequately explained by economic factors, including increased demand during the COVID-19 pandemic and rising input costs such as old corrugated cardboard. Two defendants filed separate motions to dismiss, arguing that the complaint lacked specific factual allegations tying them to the alleged price increases and output restriction conspiracy.
Judge Mary M. Rowland rejected these arguments, finding that plaintiffs’ allegations, taken together, made the inference of six of the seven coordinated price increases plausible.
The Court denied defendants’ lack of parallel pricing argument, stating that defendants’ objections “would require a plaintiff to plead perfectly lockstep conduct, with every [d]efendant acting at the same time, in the same manner, on the same products, and in the same amounts.” Instead, the Court found that the alleged repeated, closely synchronized price increases, preceded by close-in-time public announcements, all of which occurred across materially different economic conditions often following extended pricing lulls, were suggestive of an agreement. Defendants’ alleged decision to implement a $50-per-ton increase on the same day, after two and a half years without an industry price increase, in its first-round price increase was especially compelling for the Court.
Additionally, the Court found that defendants’ alternative explanation for the price increases, COVID-related input cost and demand increases, was not an obvious explanation that fatally undermines any plausible argument that a conspiracy existed. In this case, the Court stated that demand or input cost fluctuations “may sometimes make [d]efendants’ explanation more plausible, and sometimes the opposite.” Specifically, here, the fluctuations do not “sufficiently correlate with the timing of [d]efendants’ price increases such that they provide an obvious explanation undermining the plausibility of the alleged conspiracy.”
As to the separate individual motions, the Court stated that a complaint “need not contain detailed defendant by defendant allegations,” but instead, needs to plausibly allege the existence of a common scheme, and a conscious commitment by each defendant to said scheme. In this case, the two defendants participated in the majority of the six well-pleaded synchronized lockstep price increases, and had opportunities to collude with other defendants at the conferences and trade association meetings. For these reasons, Judge Rowland explained that whether there was an actual agreement between the defendants boils down to “factual disagreements that should be tested by discovery.”
The Court’s decision underscores that antitrust conspiracy claims are fact specific. Courts will review the totality of the circumstances, including all relevant, plausibly alleged facts and plus factors, when considering whether the complaint plausibly alleges a conspiracy.
Antitrust Litigation