Indiana Appeals Court Rules in Favor of Manufacturer Berry Global

The Indiana Court of Appeals recently handed printing and packaging solutions company Berry Global and the NAM a victory, reaffirming meaningful limits on executive branch power to investigate private businesses (Indiana Capital Chronicle).

What’s going on: In late July, a three-judge panel ruled in Rokita v. Berry Global Group, Inc. that Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita could not force the manufacturer to cooperate with an investigation “in the absence of a specific allegation.”

• In 2025, Rokita took legal action against Berry Global and community-resource group the Haitian Center for declining to respond to what they considered unlawful civil investigative demands (CIDs) concerning abstract forced labor and human trafficking concerns.
• The previous year, “as part of a purported labor trafficking investigation,” Rokita had ordered the groups to turn over sensitive employee information. Both declined to respond.

What we said: In April, the NAM Legal Center filed an amicus brief asking the Indiana Court of Appeals to reaffirm state law limits on executive branch power to investigate private companies.

• The CIDs from Rokita’s office were baseless and sweeping, encompassing “‘39 separate interrogatories and 28 separate requests for production of documents,’ including information on participating refugees’ and immigrants’ housing, careers, legal representation and mental health status,” the NAM wrote.
• The NAM continued: “[C]ivil investigative demands must be justified at the outset by a concrete and lawful basis, rather than validated retroactively by the hope—or claim—that something useful might turn up.”

What the court said: The appeals court agreed.

• “For an investigation to exist, there must be a factual predicate—an articulable reason to suspect that particular wrongdoing may be afoot,” Judge Nancy H. Vaidik wrote in the opinion.
• “A mere hunch will not suffice. Here, the Attorney General has not shown that he has information of any sort, such as a complaint or tip, about a specific potential statutory violation. … Therefore, the CIDs issued to Berry Global and the Haitian Center were unauthorized, invalid and unenforceable.”