Pepsi accused of price discrimination in new merchant class action

Beverage giant PepsiCo PEP has been accused in a merchant lawsuit in U.S. court of illegally giving some retailers better price deals than others, in a case mirroring one that President Donald Trump’s Federal Trade Commission abandoned.

The proposed class action was filed on Tuesday in the federal court in Manhattan by the operator of an Italian restaurant alleging anticompetitive and unfair business practices over the sale of Pepsi soft drinks.

The lawsuit alleges Pepsi is violating a provision of antitrust law that forbids sellers from playing favorites with pricing and discount opportunities, creating an uneven playing field where one merchant pays a higher price than another for the same products.

Pepsi has provided payments and allowances to Walmart, according to the lawsuit, that are not also made available to competing retailers.

The restaurant in its lawsuit said Pepsi “places an unfair and oppressive burden on other stores and retailers who are not provided the same advantages" as the retail giant.

Pepsi and attorneys for the restaurant owner did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Walmart also did not immediately respond to a similar request. Walmart is not a defendant.

The lawsuit dusts off an old, rarely used law called the Robinson-Patman Act, which was enacted in 1936.

The Biden administration’s FTC sought to rejuvenate that law, which curtails discriminatory pricing practices. The FTC sued Pepsi in late January, but the second Trump administration in May dropped the lawsuit.

In doing so, Trump-appointed FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson in a statement criticized the lawsuit's timing, which came just days before the end of the Biden administration. He called the litigation a “nakedly political effort to commit this administration to pursuing little more than a hunch that Pepsi had violated the law.”

The FTC did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the new private lawsuit.

The new lawsuit seeks unspecified monetary damages on behalf of a nationwide class of Pepsi purchasers that was estimated to be in the thousands.

The case is Michael Giannasca v. PepsiCo Inc, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 1:25-cv-06440.

For plaintiff: Thomas Burt of Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Hertz, and Joseph Marchese of Bursor & Fisher

For defendant: No appearance yet

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