Grocers Did Not Fix Price of Eggs, Jury Finds : Trial: Ralphs, Vons and Lucky were accused of conspiring to artificially inflate prices, but plaintiffs lacked proof.

Southern California’s top three supermarket chains did not conspire to fix or raise the price of eggs, a jury in San Diego found Thursday.

The 9-3 verdict in favor of Ralphs Grocery Co., Vons Cos. and Lucky Stores Inc., ended a six-week trial in San Diego County Superior Court in which consumers claimed the chains monitored one another’s prices and conspired to keep them artificially high.

The verdict suggests that Southern California consumers, who have been paying more for eggs than anyone else in the country, won’t see a drop in prices soon.

Attorney Don Howarth, representing egg consumers in the class-action lawsuit, said he will ask the judge next week to decide a separate charge of unfair competition, which he says does not require proof of an official price-fixing agreement.

“The jury found there wasn’t enough proof of a [price-fixing] conspiracy, but that doesn’t mean they haven’t done it,” Howarth said.

But a lawyer for Vons, Gregory Stone of San Diego, said the judge is unlikely to rule against the supermarkets given the verdict.

The consumers were seeking as much as $89 million in damages for people who purchased eggs in the Southland over the last seven years. Under a state antitrust law, the suit could have cost the chains up to $267 million, or triple the amount of the alleged overcharges.

However, the circumstantial evidence presented at trial failed to convince the jury that there was an official agreement among the chains to set prices and refrain from retail competition.

“We felt all along that this suit had no merit,” said Kevin Herglotz, a spokesman for Vons. All of the chains deny fixing prices, claiming they discount prices about once a month and give discounts to club card members.

In the suit, consumers Sherrie McCampbell and Carrie O’Huskey contended that the chains used employees to monitor one another’s prices and then matched them. In taped depositions shown during the trial, a handful of supermarket executives admitted that their goal was to keep prices within pennies of one another.

Retail prices for eggs in California, the second-largest egg-producing state, can run as much as $1 more per dozen than eggs sold in many other states. When the suit was filed in 1996, the retail price of eggs in California averaged $1.99 to $2.09. On Thursday, a dozen large AA eggs were selling for $2.09 at Ralphs.

Egg prices at Vons and Lucky stores in Southern California, plaintiffs argued, are even higher than in their Las Vegas stores, where the eggs must be trucked in over a much longer distance.

The price run-up began in 1983, when an avian flu epidemic decimated flocks. When the population of hens was restored, retail prices dropped dramatically everywhere but California, where retailers found that shoppers would still buy eggs at higher prices.

Egg farmers and distributors claim they aren’t making huge profits. As of March, they were selling large eggs for 51 cents a dozen, and analysts say it costs egg processors only 15 to 20 cents to clean and package them.

Some critics blame the huge upfront rebates that some of the state’s largest egg farmers pay to the supermarket chains in exchange for stocking their eggs exclusively. In 1996, such rebates from giant Norco Ranch Inc. totaled $4.5 million at Vons, according to court documents.

However, jury forewoman Kelly Briggs said the plaintiffs failed to convince enough jurors that the three competing grocery chains reached a back-room agreement to cheat consumers.

“There was no smoking gun,” Briggs said.

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Times wire services were used in compiling this report.