ROCKLAND – Attorneys for Maine’s wild blueberry growers, who won a class-action lawsuit involving price fixing by three Down East processors, want the companies’ accounts frozen to the tune of $61 million, which they say represents the processors’ real and personal property.

William Robitzek, an attorney for the growers, filed the paperwork in Knox County Superior Court on Monday.

It means that if Justice Joseph Jabar, who heard the case this fall, grants the request, any bank or other party holding the processors’ assets would have to freeze the companies’ accounts.

Attorneys for the defendants are expected to file their opposition to the growers’ motion within three weeks.

Attachment is a legal process by which a court may take control of a creditor’s property. It can involve use of a trustee, or third party, to manage the process. The growers’ attorney is seeking a trustee.

“I think the trustee process is surprising, because it is not authorized under Maine law,” said Melissa Hewey, the Portland attorney representing Cherryfield Foods Inc. of Cherryfield, which was named in the suit along with Jasper Wyman & Son of Milbridge and Allen’s Blueberry Freezer of Ellsworth.

“It seems to me that this motion is really trying to disrupt the businesses of these processors,” said Hewey. “I don’t see that that’s in anybody’s best interests. It doesn’t help the growers, the processors or the state of Maine. Why are they doing this?”

Robitzek could not be reached for comment Monday.

The jury’s award of $18.6 million represents the amount the growers contend they were shortchanged between the 1996 and 1999 seasons. Based on that, the interest alone has been calculated at more than $5 million as of Dec. 1, Robitzek said in the motion. Interest for the award continues to accrue daily at a rate of $11,392.24.

During the trial, Robitzek said the damages would be trebled because of the case’s antitrust component, but that has not yet occurred.

Monday’s motion also calls for the processors to cover the cost of the growers’ fees for attorneys and experts – a total of $118,097.46.

Maine’s 500 growers were represented as a group in the lawsuit, which charged that Maine’s three largest processors conspired to depress the prices paid to the growers in the late 1990s. The processors have vehemently denied any price fixing.

Thomas Worcester of Columbia was one of the three growers who filed the suit initially three years ago.

He doesn’t care for what he perceives as the turn in public sentiment against the growers since the decision was announced Nov. 17.

“It’s wicked,” Worcester said Monday. “This isn’t something that a half-dozen growers dreamed up overnight. The growers are taking the heat on this.

“But we caught the processors with their hands in the cookie jar. They think they’re God, and they’re not.”