Law360 (October 30, 2025, 8:08 PM EDT) -- Agri Stats Inc. and pork producers facing an impending trial on allegations that they schemed to limit pork supply and drive up prices are asking a Minnesota federal judge to pause the case while they continue a push for his recusal in the Eighth Circuit.

In a motion for a stay Wednesday, the defendants in the sweeping antitrust class action argued that their case for recusal will likely find more success with a circuit court panel than the federal district judge himself, who earlier this month refused to step away from the litigation over his law clerk's previous work for the plaintiffs' lawyers in a related lawsuit. According to Eighth Circuit rules, the companies said, the court typically orders responses or denies mandamus petitions like the one they filed Oct. 17 within 14 days, meaning that any delay would be negligible if the petition is denied.

The defendants are looking to vacate U.S. District Judge John R. Tunheim's March denial of their summary judgment motion in the case over the clerk's purported conflict of interest, which they say the court delayed disclosing, "further[ing] an appearance of bias."

"Plaintiffs' only harm [from a stay] is mere delay. No trial date exists, and plaintiffs disagree among themselves about trial and remand scheduling," Smithfield Foods, Seaboard Goods, Clemens Foods and Agri Stats said in their motion for a stay Wednesday. "Finally, the integrity of the judicial process, which certain defendants seek to safeguard and vindicate, is a public interest of the highest order."

A stay, they said, would give the appeals court time to assess the appearance of impartiality — key for what they called a "closely watched case worth billions of dollars."

"As for the public interest, of course, 'it should be of little dispute that having public confidence in the judiciary is an interest of the highest order,'" they said Wednesday, citing the Eighth Circuit's 2012 decision in Wersal v. Sexton .

The pork producers are facing claims from three separate classes of plaintiffs that they illegally shared production and pricing information through the data analytics firm Agri Stats, also a defendant in the case, in order to suppress production and artificially inflate prices. In his 232-page opinion, Judge Tunheim denied nearly all of the companies' summary judgment motions, setting the case up for trial. Earlier this month, Tyson Foods joined JBS USA, Smithfield and Hormel Foods in settling with indirect purchaser plaintiffs.

The companies brought their motion for recusal in April, claiming that Judge Tunheim's clerk previously worked for firms representing one of the plaintiff classes and has a standing offer to join another firm that has targeted "Big Agriculture." Their filing also claimed that the clerk "publicly embraced plaintiffs' attorneys in this case in the courtroom immediately following oral argument on … Daubert motions."

Judge Tunheim rejected the recusal motion earlier this month, saying the defendants had "fabricated an appearance of impropriety" where there was none, and calling the clerk "one of more than a half-dozen law clerks who have worked on this matter over the course of more than seven years and dozens of motions." According to the judge, the clerk never actually worked on the sprawling case during his summer internships with the plaintiffs' firms. And the timing of the motions — following the defendants' losses on Daubert and summary judgment motions — gave the appearance that the recusal bid may have been more "tactical than sincere," he said.