ROCKLAND – A judge tripled damages against Maine’s three largest blueberry processors to a total of $56 million, in court action Friday. The processing companies earlier had been found guilty of price fixing.

Justice Joseph Jabar signed the amended judgment. The legal action had been initiated by a lawsuit brought by blueberry growers.

Jabar had issued a previous judgment after the close of the 11-day trial in November in Knox County Superior Court. That judgment identified the award as $18.6 million, or what the jury thought the growers were shortchanged by the processors’ apparent conspiring to set field prices over four seasons in the late 1990s.

The processors were Allen’s Blueberry Freezer of Ellsworth, Jasper Wyman & Son of Milbridge and Cherryfield Foods Inc. of Cherryfield.

The amended judgment, filed last week by attorneys for the growers and considered during a two-hour hearing Friday, formally tripled the jury verdict’s award. The damages are automatically tripled in civil cases involving antitrust issues, although the jury was not advised of that in advance.

The growers’ attorneys wanted the court documents to reflect that $56 million needs to be dispersed among the state’s 500 growers who form the class behind the suit, once the claims process begins.

The motion to uphold even the $18.6 million award, much less triple it, was fought vigorously by attorneys representing the three companies.

The new counsel for Cherryfield Foods, William Kayatta Jr. of Portland, tried to convince the justice to set aside the verdict entirely.

“The judgment itself [$18.6 million] by any stretch is a staggering amount in relation to the companies,” said Kayatta, whose firm, Pierce Atwood, came aboard last week as the processors make plans to appeal the case to the Maine Supreme Court.

“It is not in the public interest to have an entire industry that is subject to such a judgment. Practically speaking, we are talking bankruptcy even if you look at the $18.6 million,” said Kayatta.

Attorneys for the growers were asked by the justice to submit a proposal for how the claims process should be handled.

The hearing was the first courtroom action since the jury decided 7-1 in favor of the growers on Nov. 17.

Scheduled for 9 a.m., it was delayed for three hours after as many as 11 attorneys for both sides moved into the law library for pre-hearing negotiations. Seven attorneys represented the processors and four represented the growers.

Waiting in the courtroom were three of the case’s four original plaintiffs, Nathan Pease of Unity, Alan Johnson of Rockport and Thomas Worcester of Columbia.

Also waiting for news was a financial officer from one of the banks that holds some of the companies’ assets, which have been threatened by the growers’ motion to use the trustee process to ensure they secure the extent of the award.

Roy Allen, owner of Allen’s Blueberry Freezer; Robert Spear, the state’s commissioner of agriculture; and Mark Randlett, one of the state’s assistant attorney generals who arrived with Spear, were also present for the hearing.

The delay suggested that a resolution might be at hand, but the arrival of the justice quickly moved the day’s developments back to hearing mode.

“We went as far as we could,” Lewiston attorney William Robitzek, representing the growers, said of the pre-hearing meeting of attorneys. “We will talk more next week.”

The processors’ attorneys used the hearing to ask the justice to reconsider the certification of the growers filing the lawsuit. They suggested there now exists an undercurrent of unease among a portion of growers who may feel that the end result of the lawsuit is not in the best interests of the industry.

They pointed to a petition that gained as many as 170 signatures from growers who want to involve Gov. John Baldacci in finding a resolution for the industry’s current disarray, rather than see through the outcomes brought by the jury’s decision.

Kayatta said that not all growers are still backing the original plaintiffs, largely because of the attorneys’ aggressive moves immediately after the verdict to file attachments to secure the processors’ assets.

Jabar didn’t buy that the perceived current discontent among some growers had anything to do with the merits of the price-fixing case.

“Are you saying that the actions taken by the [growers’] attorneys to preserve the estate has created conflict, that class certification should be withdrawn because of that?” Jabar retorted. “Why disenfranchise all of them, if some of them are unhappy now?”

Nathan Pease, one of the original plaintiffs, said his intention in starting the suit more than three years ago was merely the pursuit of fairness.

“I didn’t do this to put anyone out of business,” he said while waiting for the hearing to start. “All we growers want is to be treated fairly. We want the processors to make money. But we want that to happen fairly.”

James Kilbreth, the attorney representing Wyman’s, saw the day’s deliberations differently.

“Today made it clear that the growers’ focus is getting as many dollars out of the processors as they can,” he said. “They want to pin down and freeze the industry.”