Title 10. Promotion and Identification of Agricultural Products — Subtitle 2. Discrimination Against Agricultural Marketing Associations

No buyer, handler, distributor, dealer, or agent, who purchases or contracts to purchase, from a producer field and livestock products produced on a farm may:

To enforce this section, the Attorney General shall receive sworn complaints of violations or threatened violations of this subtitle from affected producers of raw agricultural products or the cooperative agricultural marketing association of which the producers are members, or with whom they have a marketing contract. The Attorney General immediately shall make all necessary investigations, examinations, or inspections of any violation or threatened violation specified in the sworn complaint filed with him.

After receiving a sworn complaint and holding an informal hearing on the charges made in the complaint, the Attorney General immediately shall bring an action to enjoin the violation of any provision of this subtitle as set forth in the complaint in the circuit court of the county where the violation occurred. A summons in the action against any defendant shall be issued as in other civil actions. Actions against different defendants may be consolidated, in the discretion of the court, if the alleged violations are of the same provision, have occurred in the same or an adjoining county, relate to the same production season, and consolidation can be made without prejudice to a substantial right of any defendant.

This subtitle does not affect the rights of a producer of raw agricultural products, who has not signed a contract with a cooperative agricultural marketing association, to bargain for his crop individually with any buyer. A buyer may bargain for any of his raw agricultural product requirements with any cooperative agricultural marketing association but is not required to do so. The inability of a buyer or his refusal to meet the terms and conditions of any cooperative agricultural marketing association proposed contract shall not be interpreted as a boycott or discrimination against the cooperative agricultural marketing association or its members.