CHARLESTON, W.V. – A group of consumers who purchase food from Aramark Corporation’s correctional services has filed a class action lawsuit challenging Aramark’s scheme to unfairly profit off them. Incarcerated people and their loved ones allege that Aramark drives them to purchase food from its food-for-purchase programs, such as commissary, Fresh Favorites, and iCare, by failing to provide them with adequate mandatory daily meals.
“Food is a uniquely powerful tool, and Aramark is using it to exploit a captive consumer market of incarcerated people and their families to unlawfully profit off them,” said Shennan Kavanagh, director of litigation at the National Consumer Law Center. “Aramark’s misconduct has been widely publicized, and it is time for it to treat all of its consumers fairly, including incarcerated people and their families.”
The incarcerated people and their families who are suing Aramark allege that Aramark’s scheme violates the West Virginia Consumer Credit and Protection Act and related laws. The complaint alleges that Aramark has engaged in a scheme to extort profits from incarcerated consumers and their loved ones by failing to provide incarcerated people with mandated daily meals services, so they are driven to purchase food from Aramark-owned vendors.
Aramark has exclusive control over all food provision in West Virginia’s correctional facilities, including at Mt. Olive Correctional Complex in Fayette County, where the incarcerated plaintiffs are detained. Incarcerated consumers are a captive market and have no choices for obtaining or purchasing food other than through Aramark. They are not allowed to receive food directly from family members or other loved ones, who must also purchase care packages through Aramark. While Aramark has a contract with West Virginia that mandates specific standards for its free daily meals services in prisons including Mt. Olive, it grossly fails to meet those or even its own purported business standards.
Plaintiffs and the proposed classes are represented by Mountain State Justice, Relman Colfax PLLC, and the National Consumer Law Center.
Lydia Milnes, the Deputy Director of Mountain State Justice, a non-profit legal services organization in West Virginia, said, “Soaring food prices and utility bills are already straining West Virginian’s budgets; families with loved ones in prison cannot afford to keep sending money to Aramark, a huge national corporation, simply to make sure their loved ones have enough to eat, especially when Aramark is already receiving millions from the State of West Virginia to feed those same people.”
The complaint shines a light on a concerning cycle of abuse that forces incarcerated consumers at Mt. Olive to buy food from Aramark with money that they could use for other purposes, such as communicating with family, purchasing over-the-counter medications, or saving for reentry. Family members, already burdened by lost income due to their loved one’s incarceration, often sacrifice their own wellbeing to purchase food packages from Aramark to supplement Aramark’s inadequate daily food services.
The complaint alleges that Aramark exploits its exclusive control over both the mandated free daily meals services and food-for-purchase programs to perpetuate this scheme; by limiting the quality, quantity, and variety of daily meals services, Aramark drives incarcerated consumers to purchase food from its food-for-purchase programs. The complaint alleges that Aramark regularly fails to provide sufficient ingredients for its own recipes, including providing grossly insufficient (and at times no) amounts of meat, dairy, and vegetables required for the recipes. Additional accounts of misconduct throughout West Virginia mirror a nationwide problem, as Aramark Corporation has been repeatedly accused of severe health and safety violations, sanitation violations, unauthorized food substitutions, undercooked food, and food shortages where it has done business in correctional facilities across the country.
“Aramark’s scheme has and continues to substantially injure the consumers incarcerated at Mt. Olive and their loved ones, all to unjustly profit from consumers who have no choice or bargaining power,” said Rebecca Livengood, Partner at Relman Colfax. “We are proud to represent our courageous Plaintiffs leading this class to ensure justice for West Virginians.”
Plaintiffs are seeking monetary, declaratory, and injunctive relief on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated to stop Aramark’s illegal conduct.
###
Relman Colfax PLLC is a national civil rights law firm dedicated to protecting civil rights and enforcing our nation’s civil rights laws. Relman Colfax envisions a more just, inclusive and equitable society, where discrimination and segregation do not determine outcomes in housing, lending, employment, education, public accommodations, and criminal justice.
Support NCLC
Please support NCLC's work to advance consumer rights and economic justice with a tax-deductible contribution today!
Donate