May 27, 2026
Brent W. Johnson is helping to pioneer the use of antitrust law to tackle collusion in low-wage labor markets with work that includes representing workers from poultry- and meat-processing plants in a pair of cases that led to more than $600 million in settlements last year.
Co-chair of Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC’s antitrust practice, Johnson has represented workers in multiple labor-side antitrust cases over the past decade, stretching across a number of industries and including both highly skilled workers and lower-income employees, earning him a spot among Law360’s 2026 Titans of the Plaintiffs Bar.
He has also worked on traditional antitrust cases, including a long-running price-fixing case in the broiler-chicken industry.
While Johnson takes satisfaction from helping consumers and small businesses win money after large corporations break the rules, he said, representing workers in cases against their own employers has been the most satisfying opportunity of his career.
“How much money people make and how they’re treated by their employers, and whether that’s done in a dignified fashion, really matters to folks,” Johnson told Law360.
Working with attorneys from Handley Farah & Anderson and Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP, Johnson is representing poultry plant workers who accused major processors — including Purdue, Tyson and Pilgrim’s Pride — of sharing compensation data, including through the agricultural data firm Agri Stats Inc., to suppress wages.
The workers won $398 million in settlements with processors approved in Maryland federal court last year and have also now inked an agreement with the final defendant, Agri Stats, that includes significant changes to the benchmarking reports that allegedly allowed the processors to share wage information.
The same team of firms is also representing beef- and pork-processing plant workers who made similar claims against Tyson, Cargill, JBS Foods, National Beef and others. Workers in that case have secured about $202.7 million in settlements.
“Representing lower-income workers and proving that we can have successful antitrust class actions on their behalf, despite some of the relevant market and other challenges is particularly gratifying,” Johnson said.
There’s a particular concern for named plaintiffs in labor-side antitrust cases: that an employer could retaliate against them. While Johnson said corporations will not generally retaliate directly against someone when a lawsuit is ongoing, workers worry they could find themselves blacklisted when they try to get their next job.
This was a major concern for the animation workers Johnson represented in an earlier labor-side antitrust case, targeting an alleged conspiracy by Steve Jobs, as head of Pixar, and George Lucas, as head of Lucasfilm, to not hire each other’s employees, Johnson said. In that industry, workers frequently change employers with each film they work on.
“If you sue the handful of companies that do that work, you’d be quite worried about getting hired for the next one,” he said. “The concern is probably not as acute among beef, pork and poultry workers, but it’s still there.”
Johnson credits the animation workers case, where settlements totaled nearly $170 million, as sparking his interest in labor-side antitrust issues. His work in the space currently includes a case targeting an alleged agreement between the nation’s largest military shipbuilders and engineering consulting firms not to hire architects and engineers from one another.
Read Titan of the Plaintiffs Bar: Cohen Milstein’s Brent Johnson.