Case Description
The State filed a complaint alleging that Oak Grove was involved with bid-rigging and market allocation schemes on milk contracts with Minnesota public school districts primarily located in the southwestern part of the State. The State alleged that Oak Grove agreed with other dairies to divide the public school districts so that Oak Grove would submit the winning bid for milk contracts with certain school districts and would submit complementary, or non-competitive, bids in other school districts. In a Consent Decree Oak Grove agreed to pay $460,000 in restitution. The settlement arose from an investigation initiated by the U.S. Department of Justice, Antitrust Division, and undertaken jointly with the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office. Ultimately, Minnesota settled with three dairies in the school milk cases, and the bulk of the $889,880 resulting from those settlements was distributed to the impacted school districts in southwest and northwest Minnesota.
