Dow Chemical to Settle Price-Fixing Case

Dow Chemical Co said on Friday it has agreed to pay $835 million to settle a decade-old lawsuit brought by customers, but denied that it had conspired to artificially inflate polyurethane prices.

The settlement to resolve the $1.06 billion judgment against Dow imposed in 2013, comes nearly a year after both sides abruptly backtracked from a previous agreement to resolve the case.

"While Dow is settling this case, it continues to strongly believe that it was not part of any conspiracy and the judgment was fundamentally flawed as a matter of class action law," the company said in a statement on Friday.

Dow has argued that the Supreme Court's judgment against the company violates class action law in multiple ways, particularly with respect to a ruling in 2011 favoring Wal-Mart Stores Inc and a 2013 ruling favoring Comcast Corp.

Several companies, including Dow, had been accused by customers in a 2005 lawsuit of conspiring to fix prices of urethane chemicals in the preceding six years.

Dow was the only defendant not to settle and was found liable in February 2013 by a federal jury in Kansas for $400 million in damages.

That sum was tripled under antitrust law to $1.2 billion, and then reduced to $1.06 billion plus interest because of other settlements.

Reporting by Anet Josline Pinto