Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron (MU): where the DRAM price-fixing lawsuit stands, updated October 28, 2026

Update, October 28, 2026: The defendants want more time before the case management conference. On October 23, all five defendants filed an administrative motion, docket entry 65, asking Judge Noel Wise to move the conference from December 15, 2026, to January 5, 2027, and to push back the deadlines that lead up to it, "to account for the Clerk resetting oral argument on Defendants' pending Motion to Dismiss from October 21, 2026 to November 13, 2026." Under the proposal, the joint case management statement would be due December 18 instead of November 25, and initial disclosures would move from December 7 to January 5, 2027. According to the motion, the plaintiffs "take no position" on the request. The court had not ruled on it as of October 28. The hearing on the motion to dismiss remains set for November 13, and the defendants' October 7 reply is still not on the free public docket. Micron (MU) closed at $928.76 on October 27, down about 10% from its October 9 close of $1,029.00 and about 23% below its June 25 peak of $1,213.56, according to Robinhood market data.

Update, October 12, 2026: The hearing has moved. A clerk's notice entered October 8, docket entry 64, resets argument on the motion to dismiss from October 21 to November 13, 2026, at 9 a.m. before Judge Noel Wise in San Jose, Courtroom 3. The notice gives no reason. Briefing is complete: the defendants filed their reply on October 7, docket entry 63. That reply is not yet on the free public docket, so this tracker has not read it and will not characterize it. Micron's annual report, filed October 9, adds something this tracker had not reported: a second complaint. According to the report, an individual filed a complaint "containing similar allegations of conspiracy against the same defendants" in federal court in Hawaii on July 17, 2026. The report dates the alleged conspiracy to "a period beginning October 26, 2022," and says the Northern District of California complaint "seeks damages, treble damages, injunctive relief, attorneys' fees, and costs." Apart from patent license charges recognized in its fourth quarter, Micron says the company is "unable to predict the outcome of any of the matters noted above and cannot make a reasonable estimate of the potential loss or range of possible losses." Micron (MU) closed at $1,029.00 on October 9, down about 5% from its September 25 close of $1,082.28 and about 15% below its June 25 peak of $1,213.56, according to Robinhood market data.

The three companies that make almost all of the world's computer memory are being sued again, this time as RAM prices sit near record highs.

On June 25, 2026, a proposed federal antitrust class action was filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California against Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron Technology (MU). The suit accuses the trio, which together control the vast majority of the global market for dynamic random access memory (DRAM), of conspiring to limit supply and inflate prices. The case, Garciaguirre v. Samsung Electronics, names five entities: Samsung Electronics and Samsung Semiconductor, SK Hynix Inc. and SK Hynix America, and Micron. The case number is now 5:26-cv-06345-NW, after a move to the court's San Jose division.

What the complaint alleges

Everything in this section is an allegation. None of it has been proven, and the companies have not been found liable.

According to the complaint, the memory makers "simultaneously cut production, coordinated a pivot to HBM and exit from DDR3 and DDR4, and otherwise decreased and locked up conventional DRAM supply" even as demand kept climbing, sending prices sharply higher. In plain terms, the plaintiffs claim the three deliberately throttled the supply of everyday memory chips, in part by shifting capacity toward the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) that AI data centers are scrambling for, and that this is what drove the price spike many shoppers have nicknamed the "RAMpocalypse." The filing also alleges the companies rehired and rewarded executives who served prison time for the DRAM price-fixing conspiracy of the early 2000s.

The complaint puts a number on that price spike: conventional DRAM contract prices climbed roughly 700% in the 18 months through early 2026, according to the filing. The complaint also alleges a specific mechanism starting in January 2026, when all three companies began vetting customers and policing orders, questioning buyers about who they were reselling to, how much memory they wanted, and whether their stated demand was even real.

The suit seeks class-action status on behalf of businesses and consumers who allegedly overpaid for products containing DRAM, from PCs and phones to servers, and asks for damages.

The defendants call the case a rerun

On September 2, all five defendants filed a joint motion to dismiss, docket entry 58, brought by Cleary Gottlieb, O'Melveny & Myers, and Gibson Dunn. The motion argues the complaint "recycles the same legal theory, based on the same kind of allegations, against the same Defendants" as the 2018 case the Ninth Circuit dismissed in 2022, a decision the briefs call DRAM II. The motion says the complaint "alleges no direct evidence of an agreement to restrict capacity and limit supply" because "there are no conspiratorial communications, admissions, documents, or witness accounts alleged." The companies' output decisions, the motion says, "were staggered over months and differed in timing and degree," and, quoting the Ninth Circuit, the state-law claims "rise and fall with the Sherman Act claim."

Outside court, SK Hynix has said the case is at an initial stage and that the company intends to defend itself, and Micron has denied the claims. SK Hynix also lists the suit as a risk factor in the SEC filing for its Nasdaq listing and says a potential loss cannot yet be estimated.

The plaintiffs say this time is different

The plaintiffs, represented by Bathaee Dunne LLP, built their September 22 brief around separating this case from DRAM II. In DRAM II, by their account, a market leader trimmed its rate of growth, two smaller rivals followed a quarter later, the profit sacrifice ran to tens of millions of dollars, and the supply restraint dissolved within two years. Here, the brief argues, the smaller firms cut first, the market leader reversed years of practice and announced cuts two months later, the profit sacrifice from declining to expand runs to hundreds of millions and perhaps billions of dollars a year, and the restraint has held for more than three years, through what the brief calls a "697 percent price increase, without a single defection."

The legal frame is standard antitrust pleading: parallel conduct plus eleven so-called plus factors, the circumstantial markers courts weigh when there is no direct evidence of an agreement. The brief's answer to the defense is that the motion "offers excuses for each factor in isolation, the plausibility of which falls apart when considering all the plus factors as a whole." Among the conduct the plaintiffs point to are Micron's shutdown of Crucial, described in the brief as a profitable twenty-nine-year-old consumer business, just as consumer prices peaked, and the three makers' announcements, within three months of one another, that they would retire a fully depreciated product line whose price was climbing.

Why this keeps happening, and the catch

This is not the first time these names have been in the antitrust crosshairs. Samsung and SK Hynix both pleaded guilty to a criminal price-fixing conspiracy that ran from 1999 to 2002, paying $300 million and $185 million respectively and sending several executives to prison. The Justice Department's full DRAM investigation, which also caught Infineon and Elpida, produced more than $731 million in fines across four companies. The same three companies were also hit with another class action over a 2016 to 2017 supply squeeze. That track record is part of why plaintiffs keep filing.

Headlines calling this the "third DRAM price-fixing lawsuit" mean the third such case historically, after the ones in 2006 and 2018. The California case is not the only current one, though: Micron's annual report says an individual filed a similar complaint against the same defendants in federal court in Hawaii on July 17, 2026.

Here is the catch: these cases are hard to win. A nearly identical case, filed in 2018 by the law firm Hagens Berman, made almost the same argument about coordinated production cuts. A district court dismissed it in 2020, and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that dismissal in 2022, ruling that the companies' conduct was "more likely explained by lawful, unchoreographed free-market behavior" than an illegal agreement. Coordinated supply discipline in a market with only three big players can look a lot like ordinary, legal business behavior, and proving an actual agreement to fix prices is a high bar. A filing is a long way from a payout, and this suit has to clear the same bar that sank its predecessor.

What it means for the stocks

For investors, the practical read is narrow. Micron (MU) trades in the US, and SK Hynix's American depositary shares have traded on Nasdaq as SKHY since July 2026; Samsung trades in Seoul. A lawsuit is a legal overhang and a headline risk, but historically these DRAM suits have done little to the share prices, and Micron's swings since June have tracked memory-sector and AI-spending sentiment far more than the litigation, including when the memory trade sold off hard on July 16 amid separate concentration and pricing worries. The bigger story for the chips themselves remains the AI demand boom, which we broke down in our advanced packaging deep dive and the full AI stock map. Our HBM memory stocks page sorts the names into makers, packaging, equipment, and interface silicon.

The bottom line: a serious lawsuit with real history behind it, but still a set of unproven allegations, not a verdict. The next test is the motion to dismiss, which will decide whether the case moves forward.

Key dates

Coming up:

• November 13, 2026: Hearing on the motion to dismiss, 9 a.m., San Jose, Courtroom 3.
• November 20, 2026: Deadline for an agreement on electronically stored information and a protective order (the defendants have asked to move it to December 14).
• November 23, 2026: Rule 26(f) conference and ADR certifications due (proposed: December 15).
• November 25, 2026: Joint case management statement due (proposed: December 18).
• December 7, 2026: Initial disclosures due (proposed: January 5, 2027).
• December 15, 2026: Case management conference, 9 a.m., by Zoom (proposed: January 5, 2027).

So far:

• October 23, 2026: The defendants ask the court to move the case management conference to January 5, 2027, and to shift the related deadlines; the plaintiffs take no position (entry 65). No ruling yet.
• October 9, 2026: Micron's annual report discloses the Hawaii complaint.
• October 8, 2026: A clerk's notice moves the hearing from October 21 to November 13 (entry 64).
• October 7, 2026: The defendants file their reply (entry 63).
• September 22, 2026: The plaintiffs file a 31-page opposition (entry 62), asking the court to deny the motion or, in the alternative, to grant leave to amend.
• September 8, 2026: Judge Wise signs a modified scheduling order (entry 60) that extends the briefing deadlines and moves the case management conference from September 29 to December 15, rejecting the parties' request for January 26, 2027.
• September 2, 2026: All five defendants file a joint motion to dismiss (entry 58).
• July 21, 2026: Micron files its corporate disclosure statement through Rachel Brass of Gibson Dunn.
• July 17, 2026: An individual files a similar complaint against the same defendants in federal court in Hawaii, according to Micron's annual report.
• June 25, 2026: Seventeen plaintiffs file the class action in the Northern District of California.

Nothing here is investment advice. The claims described are allegations in a civil complaint and have not been proven in court, and the companies have not been found liable. Do your own research.