March 22, 2010

Law360 covers Venable victory in Perdue chicken case

1 min

Venable partner Roger Colaizzi was quoted in a March 19 Law360 story about the dismissal, with prejudice, of a class action alleging that Venable client Perdue Farms stuffed extra hearts, gizzards, livers and necks into whole chickens, forcing consumers to pay more because the chicken is priced by the pound.

Judge Virginia Kendall of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois dismissed the case on March 17 saying the allegations were not specific enough to survive dismissal.

"We think it was a baseless claim, and a dismissal with prejudice was obviously the correct result," Colaizzi told Law360. "We certainly aggressively went after that right from the beginning."

"As more and more companies face these kinds of consumer class action lawsuits, it's important to avoid the temptation to settle quickly, but rather aggressively fight back if that's the correct strategy given the merits of the case,” he added.