Rabobank Escapes Chicken Cartel Case Over ‘Ambiguous’ Emails

Cooperatieve Rabobank UA dodged antitrust claims over its alleged role in an industrywide scheme to fix broiler chicken prices, when a federal judge in Chicago dismissed allegations that the Dutch bank knowingly facilitated illegal data sharing among leading poultry processors.

Though the processors’ correspondence with Rabobank raises “the specter” that the bank served as “a communications conduit,” basing liability on exchanges of “entirely ambiguous” emails between leading chicken processors and a top agricultural lender would require “too many inferences,” Judge Thomas M. Durkin said.

Federal procedural rules don’t “permit plaintiffs to chase ghosts,” Durkin wrote Tuesday. “It is simply not ...