$56M attachment in blueberry case stands

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Maine’s high court Thursday affirmed the $56 million attachment that the state’s blueberry growers placed on three processors in January and dissolved an earlier $18 million attachment that the growers had sought in November.

It was dissolved on a technicality.

The opinion came out of a Feb. 13 appeal before the Maine Supreme Judicial Court by Allen’s Blueberry Freezer.

Lawyers had varying opinions on the significance of the ruling.

The Ellsworth processing company continues to challenge a civil jury’s guilty verdict last November that Allen’s and two other Down East processors engaged in price fixing over four seasons in the late 1990s.

The two others involved in the lawsuit, which has now lasted four years, are Jasper Wyman & Son of Milbridge and Cherryfield Foods Inc. of Cherryfield. Both reached post-judgment settlements with the growers last month for a combined $4 million, far less than the $56 million award that Allen’s alone now faces.

When the case eventually gets to the claims adjustment process, and if the case’s verdict holds up after additional appeals from Allen’s, exactly how much the growers will receive is still undetermined.

It won’t be $56 million, or even $18.6 million, both sides have said.

How much is paid out depends on how much growers will claim according to their sales to processors between 1996 and 1999.

The $18.6 million was named by the jury because that was the figure the growers’ expert witness said growers were shortchanged during those years. But that figure includes berries bought by 140 growers who chose to opt out of the case last summer, both sides acknowledge.

Moreover, Allen’s attorneys have said in post-trial hearings, not all growers harmed by the price fixing will submit their claims, further reducing the processors’ liability.

The final figure that Allen’s will pay, if the verdict stands, will be however much in claims is submitted by growers minus the $4 million that Wyman’s and Cherryfield Foods together already have agreed to pay.

Attorneys for Allen’s and the growers saw Thursday’s announcement from Portland in two lights.

Said Robert Keach, the Portland attorney working with Allen’s: “We won, and we are very pleased. The only issue we argued [on Feb. 13] was the validity of the $18 million in attachments from November.”

Countered William Robitzek, the Lewiston attorney who has represented Maine’s 500 growers in the class-action case: “It’s sort of an event without necessarily any legal significance.”

The court’s statement reads in part, “Because Allen’s has not challenged the January attachment, its property, even after the November attachment is dissolved, will remain attached in order to satisfy the January judgment of $56.04 million.”

The high court’s decision to dissolve the November order for the $18.6 million attachment was 4-1.

Robitzek had filed an amended judgment for attachment of $56 million in January after a technical error became apparent in the paperwork he filed soon after the 11-day trial at Knox County Superior Court produced a verdict.

Robitzek had filed the order for attachment in the registry of deeds in the four counties where the three processors hold property two days after the trial’s end.

But his faxes to the four registrars consisted of the Knox County court’s docket entry of the jury’s $18.6 million verdict, rather than an “attested copy of the court order awarding judgment,” signed by Justice Joseph Jabar.

Attorneys for the three processors had argued before Justice Jabar on Jan. 2 that the docket entry could not suffice as a post-judgment attachment, but the justice would not dissolve the attachment.

Rather, Justice Jabar signed an order amending the judgment that day, tripling it to $56 million. That allowed Robitzek to file the signed court order in the same registries of deeds in which he had filed the earlier November docket entry.

What happens next in this case, both attorneys indicated this week, will be a number of motions filed back in the Rockland court.

Tuesday, the high court justices ruled they would not be hearing Allen’s appeal of the case on its merits, a matter separate of the attachments issue. That hearing had been scheduled for March 11.

“This is just the beginning,” Keach said for Allen’s on Thursday. “We will move on from here.

“We will be addressing the January judgments back in Superior Court. There will be plenty of proceedings as we ask the judge to take appropriate steps to vacate that [$56 million] judgment.

“If we are not successful in Superior Court, we will be back to the [state] supreme court.”

Robitzek, meanwhile, will file motions in Rockland asking Justice Jabar to give preliminary approval of the settlements reached by both Wyman’s and Cherryfield Foods.