On December 1, 2025, Relman Colfax PLLC filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of a group of consumers who purchase food from Aramark Corporation's correctional services. Filed in the United States District Court Southern District of West Virginia, the class action complaint challenges Aramark's scheme to unfairly profit off incarcerated people and their loved ones in violation of the West Virginia Consumer Credit and Protection Act and related laws.
The lawsuit alleges that Aramark Corporation, a multi-billion-dollar, Fortune 500 company and the largest provider of food services to prisons and jails in the United States, is engaging in a scheme by which it extorts profits from incarcerated consumers and their loved ones by failing to provide adequate free daily meal services, so that people are driven to purchase food from Aramark through other channels, such as commissary food, meals from Aramark’s Fresh Favorites program, or iCare packages.
Aramark has exclusive control over all food provisions in West Virginia’s correctional facilities, including at Mt. Olive Correctional Complex in Fayette County, where the incarcerated plaintiffs are detained, and provides the mandated free daily meals services under its contract with the State, which the State pays for and requires to be provided, as well as all options that consumers have for purchasing food in these facilities.
Incarcerated consumers are a captive market and have no choices for obtaining or purchasing food other than through Aramark. They are not allowed to receive food directly from family members or other loved ones, who must also purchase care packages through Aramark. While Aramark has a contract with West Virginia that mandates specific standards for its free daily meals services in prisons including Mt. Olive, it fails to meet them.
The complaint alleges that Aramark exploits its exclusive control by failing to provide adequate quality, quantity, and variety of daily meals services.
Additional accounts of misconduct throughout West Virginia mirror a nationwide problem, as Aramark Corporation has been repeatedly accused of severe health and safety violations, sanitation violations, unauthorized food substitutions, undercooked food, and food shortages where it has done business in correctional facilities across the country.
The plaintiffs are seeking justice and shining a light on a concerning cycle of abuse that forces incarcerated consumers at Mt. Olive to buy food from Aramark with money that they could use for other purposes, such as communicating with family, purchasing over-the-counter medications, or saving for reentry. Family members, already burdened by lost income due to their loved one’s incarceration, often sacrifice their own wellbeing to purchase food packages from Aramark to supplement Aramark’s inadequate daily food services.
Plaintiffs are seeking monetary, declaratory, and injunctive relief on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated to stop Aramark’s illegal conduct.
Co-counsel includes Mountain State Justice and the National Consumer Law Center.
The Relman Colfax team consists of Rebecca Livengood, Stephen Hayes, and Ted Olds.