Pacific Seafood sued, accused of price fixing

Pacific Seafood Group, a major Northwest processor with investments in Oregon and Washington, is the target of a class-action lawsuit alleging illegal anticompetitive efforts to fix prices paid to fishermen, as well as other "fraudulent schemes" and "miscellaneous dirty tricks."

The lawsuit was filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Portland by Oregon fishermen Lloyd Whaley and his son, Todd Whaley. It seeks class-action representation of more than 3,000 fishermen and vessel owners who delivered crab, shrimp, whiting and other seafood to West Coast ports since June 21, 2006.

The lawsuit alleges Pacific Seafood's competitors who deviated from prices set by the company have received expletive-fiilled messages. Those messages allegedly came from Frank Dulcich, the company's owner, and threatened "aggressive retaliation," the suit claims.

Craig Urness, a spokesman for Pacific Seafood, said the lawsuit was without merit and "full of lies and misrepresentation."

"We are going to defend this very vigorously," Urness said.

The Whaleys' lawsuit alleges Pacific Seafood bought out a series of processor competitors, some of which it simply shut down, and has sat on empty or unused parcels of waterfront industrial land in order to lock out potential competition.

It has assembled its own commercial-fishing fleet that competes with independent fishermen, and has lent money to other skippers, sometimes requiring that they sell all the seafood they catch to Pacific, the suit says.

Pacific Seafood's acquisitions in Washington include Pacific Pride Seafood in Mukilteo in 1990, Washington Crab Producers in Westport in 1993 and Starfish in Seattle in 2003, according to the lawsuit.

Pacific Seafood, based in suburban Portland, owns and operates 18 processing plants or landing stations in West Coast communities and operates the only processing plants in seven communities, according to the lawsuit.

The Whaleys allege Pacific Seafood now controls between 50 and 75 percent of the market in Pacific whiting, groundfish, Dungeness crab and Pacific coldwater shrimp. The company is the largest seafood company in the country, with revenue of about $1 billion, according to Seafood Business, a trade magazine. Pacific Seafood employs 1,500 to 2,000 employees, 600 of them in Oregon.

This story includes information from Seattle Times staff reporter Hal Bernton and The Oregonian.