In addition to informal complaint handling and mediation, the PACA offers a formal complaint handling process for claims that cannot be resolved informally. Growers, commission merchants, dealers and brokers utilize this service in order to recover damages related to produce transactions conducted in the course of interstate and foreign commerce.
Cases that proceed formally result in a decision and order issued by the Department. On occasion, a decision and order will address an issue in a way that is new or different from the existing decisions that address the same issue. That decision will then establish the precedent for that issue and will be referenced in future decisions as support for drawing the same or similar conclusions.
Precedent decisions are published by the USDA Office of the Administrative Law Judges and can be found on their website by following the Agriculture Decisions Publication link.
In addition, PACA organized a number of the precedent decisions by subject matter, which you can view on our website by clicking on the Recent and Sample Reparation Cases by Subject Matter (pdf) link. This document also provides recent precedent decisions that are scheduled to be published by the Office of the Administrative Law Judges.