John Deere pays farmers $99 million over its alleged monopoly on repairs

Agriculture Monday Equipment manufacturer John Deere Announce It will pay $99 million in settlement of a class action lawsuit brought by its customers. The lawsuit accused the company of restricting access to tools and repairs for its tractors and other farm equipment, effectively taking advantage of a monopoly on the repair market for its products.

The money, if accepted by the farmer-allied plaintiffs, would go into a fund and eventually be distributed to Deere equipment owners who can prove they paid for the agency’s repairs at some point since 2018. In the settlement, John Deere also says it will make repair tools and services more widely available. For the next ten years at least.

John Deere has maintained tight control over how its customers repair or manipulate its equipment by not allowing access through software restrictions or requiring that equipment be brought to authorized shops for repair. This has left thousands of farmers to deal with delayed harvests and millions of dollars in lost profits while waiting for an approved fix.

The difficulty of repairing John Deere equipment has become a catalyst for the broader Right to Repair movement — people advocating for the ability to repair their own products after purchasing them. To fight back against the company, farmers did so Tractors hacked To get around software limitations. Local laws were drafted in agriculturally intensive states e.g yeah To restore power to equipment owners. Lawyers have filed several similar lawsuits against the company, including… suit It was introduced in January 2025 by the US Federal Trade Commission. The call for reform has flourished, and John Deere is often in the crosshairs.

“The right to repair is almost a misnomer,” he says. Ethan E. Litwinantitrust attorney at the Shinder Cantor Lerner law firm. “This is a fight over property rights. What farmers are claiming is that John Deere changed the rules imposed on them once they bought their tractors and other farm equipment. How can a manufacturer legitimately claim to restrict those rights after the sale?”

Litwin also pointed to the settlement amount of $99 million, instead of $100 million. It’s as if the company is charging $9.99 for a product instead of $10, to make it feel like it’s less expensive than it really is.

“That’s obviously the maximum Deere was willing to go because they didn’t want to have a nine-figure number in the press release,” Litwin says, comparing the number to similar settlement cases he’s seen. “There’s a big difference in public relations.”

In its settlement, Deere admitted no wrongdoing. By definition, the settlement must be less than the money the company is charged for and the legal costs it will incur by fighting the case. But repair advocates estimate the losses to John Deere customers as a result of repair restrictions imposed by the company somewhere in the world $4.2 billion. In the lawsuit, antitrust economist Russell Lamb It is estimated that overcharging for equipment repairs has cost farmers between $190 million and $387 million alone. Deere’s payout ends up being a small fraction of those estimated damages, split among the estimated 200,000 farmers who will likely be included in the class action disbursing the money.

“Farmers who get compensation will get a good chunk of change, but that’s not what they care about,” says Nathan Proctor, president of the Farmers Association. The right to repair Campaign at consumer advocacy organization US PIRG. “They’re not looking for five thousand dollars or something in the mail. They’re looking for the ability to fix their equipment, because if they can’t fix it, they could lose everything.”