March 7 (Reuters) - Food distributors that sued Perdue,

Sanderson and other major chicken producers for alleged

price-fixing have agreed to drop their claims after seven years

of litigation.

The settlement, disclosed in a Wednesday court filing in

Chicago federal court, does not include any payments. Perdue,

Sanderson and other defendants, which had won recent victories

in the cases, agreed that they would not seek to recoup defense

costs from the plaintiffs if they abandoned their remaining

claims.

The claims that suppliers fixed prices for wholesale direct

purchasers were part of broader - and still-ongoing - antitrust

litigation involving price-fixing claims from consumers and

commercial plaintiffs, including grocery stores.

The distributors had earlier secured nearly $285 million in

settlements in recent years from chicken producers including

Tyson and Pilgrim's Pride.

Representatives for Sanderson and Perdue did not immediately

respond to requests for comment. The plaintiffs' lawyers

declined to comment.

The distributors had alleged a years-long conspiracy by

major suppliers to keep wholesale prices artificially high by

curbing production and sharing nonpublic data about supply and

demand.

None of the settling companies admitted liability as part of

the proposed resolution, which they said served "to avoid the

costs, expenses and uncertainties" of continuing the litigation.

The distributor plaintiffs include Maplevale Farms in New

York, Pennsylvania-based John Gross & Company and New Jersey's

Ferraro Foods.

Last October, Sanderson defeated the distributors'

allegations at trial, and Perdue and a group of other companies

won a court order in June knocking them out of the case. The

plaintiffs were in the process of challenging those results.

The food distributors said in court filings that overturning

their losses would be a "significant" challenge and that the

potential costs the defendants could seek against the plaintiffs

were "substantial."

U.S. District Judge Thomas Durkin set a March 14 hearing to

weigh preliminary approval of the settlements.

The case is In re: Broiler Chicken Antitrust Litigation,

U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, No.

1:16-cv-08637.

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