News : Lawsuits over alleged fuel-pump conspiracy are settled out of court

By Clark Kauffman

A lawsuit accusing Casey's General Stores and an Iowa Board of Regents member of colluding with others as part of an illegal conspiracy to limit competition at fuel pumps has settled out of court.

The lawsuit was filed 10 weeks ago in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa by a JF Acquisitions, a North Carolina company that builds and installs gasoline pumps found at convenience stores.

The defendants in the case are Seneca Companies, based in Des Moines; OWL Services, a Michigan corporation; and Trive Capital Management, a Texas private equity firm. Although the lawsuit claims Casey's General Stores and Iowa Board of Regents member JC Risewick are involved in the alleged conspiracy, they are not named as defendants in the case. Risewick is the chief strategy officer for OWL Services and the former owner of Seneca, according to Board of Regents records.

JF Acquisitions alleged Trive has been consolidating the gas-pump distribution and servicing industry throughout the United States. Trive is alleged to have created OWL Services, which the lawsuit calls "a rollup of several fuel-dispenser distribution, installation and service companies." In 2024, the lawsuit claims, Trive quietly added an OWL competitor, Seneca, to its portfolio and never publicly announced the deal or informed regulators of it due to "obvious competition concerns."

This lack of disclosure extended to a state conflict-of-interest report filed by Risewick, the Iowa Board of Regents member, the lawsuit claims.

Risewick allegedly disclosed his affiliation with Seneca and OWL, but not with Trive - a "potentially relevant omission given the fact that the University of Iowa Foundation is a limited partner in multiple Trive funds," the lawsuit claims.

Following Trive's acquisition of Seneca, the lawsuit claims, the defendants allegedly engaged in "exclusionary and predatory conduct" aimed at cementing their combined market power and diminishing competition in the fuel-dispenser distribution and servicing market in Iowa and southern Illinois. The defendants allegedly did this by entering into what JF Acquisitions called "an unlawful conspiracy - including each of the defendants and Casey's General Stores, one of JF's most significant customers nationally and the largest convenience store chain in the Midwest region - pursuant to which Casey's has agreed with defendants that it will all but entirely boycott JF" in Iowa and southern Illinois.

The lawsuit alleges that as part of the purported conspiracy, Risewick wrote to one fuel-distribution company "in an effort to thwart JF's entry into the market." The lawsuit appears to then quote from the Risewick letter, but all of the relevant text was redacted from public view.

The lawsuit also appeared to quote from "private text messages," including one from the head of procurement for Casey's to Risewick - although, again, the actual content of the purported text message was redacted from the court filing. Risewick was appointed to the Iowa Board of Regents on June 21, 2022, by Gov. Kim Reynolds. His term expires in 2031.

The lawsuit alleged conspiracy to restrain trade in violation of the Sherman Act, as well as conspiracy to restrain and monopolize trade in violation of state law. The case was recently dismissed after the plaintiffs and defendants filed a joint motion for dismissal stating they had "resolved the claims asserted in this action."

Although some of the court filings in the case are sealed from public view, it appears the defendants in the case did not file an answer to the lawsuit before the matter was settled.

At the same time that case was settled, a federal lawsuit that Seneca filed against JF Acquisitions and D&H United Fueling Solutions in 2024 was settled. In that case, Seneca claimed it had considered entering into a business agreement with the defendants but the deal fell through. The two defendants were then left with the prospect of heightened competition in the market and, the lawsuit claimed, they "hatched a scheme to attack Seneca's business" by poaching Seneca employees, despite an alleged no-compete agreement.

JF Acquisitions and D&H United Fueling Solutions denied any wrongdoing in the matter. The case was dismissed late last month after all of the parties filed a motion for dismissal, stating they had executed a settlement agreement resolving all of the claims in the case.