IN RE: PEOPLE of the State of New York (2023)

Supreme Court, Appellate Division, First Department, New York.

IN RE: PEOPLE of the State of New York, BY Letitia JAMES, Attorney General of the State of New York, Petitioner–Respondent, v. TYSON FOODS, INC., Respondent–Appellant.

489 Decided: July 27, 2023

Renwick, P.J., Kennedy, Mendez, Rodriguez, Higgitt, JJ.

Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP, New York (Martin S. Bell of counsel), and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP, Washington, DC (John F. Terzaken, III, and Laurel E. Fresquez of the bar of the District of Columbia, admitted pro hac vice, of counsel), for appellant. Letitia James, Attorney General, New York (Cleland B. Welton, II of counsel), for respondent.

Order, Supreme Court, New York County (Erika M. Edwards, J.), entered December 7, 2022, which denied respondent's cross-petition to quash petitioner Attorney General's subpoena duces tecum served in connection with an investigation into complaints about price gouging of meat products during the COVID–19 pandemic or, in the alternative, for a protective order, unanimously affirmed, without costs.

The Attorney General has broad powers to investigate price gouging under General Business Law § 396–r(2) and Executive Law § 63(12). Respondent Tyson Foods, Inc. failed to demonstrate that the Attorney General's subpoena calls for documents that are utterly irrelevant to any proper inquiry or that “the futility of the process to uncover anything legitimate is inevitable or obvious” (Anheuser–Busch, Inc. v. Abrams, 71 N.Y.2d 327, 331–332, 525 N.Y.S.2d 816, 520 N.E.2d 535 [1988][internal quotation marks omitted]). Rather, at this stage, the subpoena was properly sustained because the documents sought bear a reasonable relation to the issue of whether respondent or others in the chain of distribution of respondent's products engaged in price gouging within the meaning of General Business Law § 396–r(2) (id. at 332, 525 N.Y.S.2d 816, 520 N.E.2d 535).

We have considered respondent's remaining arguments and find them unavailing.

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