ADM Claims Economic Model Faulty in Case

LINCOLN, Neb. (DTN) -- Archer Daniels Midland called for the exclusion of an expert witness and an economic model he uses in an ongoing ethanol markets lawsuit, telling the court at the end of last week that the model is proven to be unreliable.

Specifically, AOT Holding Ag has alleged ADM suppressed the daily benchmark price of ethanol to benefit its short positions, according to the lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Central Illinois. AOT alleged ADM's actions benefited the company by increasing the value of ADM's "short" or "hedged" ethanol positions.

AOT filed the class-action lawsuit in May 2020, alleging ADM manipulated the daily ethanol market at the Argo terminal by flooding the fuel terminal with lower-priced ethanol starting in November 2017 through March 2019. The specific trading in question occurred during the 30-minute "market-on-close," or MOC, window.

AOT has been fighting for the court to hear the testimony of the witness since 2023.

In a court document filed on Sept. 12, 2025, ADM said a regression model created by expert witness Shaun Ledgerwood was not reliable for several reasons.

Ledgerwood's model is purported to show ADM manipulated the ethanol market.

ADM argued last week that an ethanol stocks variable in the model is affected by the very price changes the model is trying to measure, making it unreliable.

In addition, a test conducted on the model by Ledgerwood shows it produces wildly different results with the stocks variable is removed, ADM told the court.

"Ledgerwood's methodology would make ADM responsible for damages when prices are not suppressed -- even when prices are supposedly inflated," ADM said in the court filing.

"Their defense of Ledgerwood, on the ground that ADM is liable for suppressing prices and also for not suppressing prices, is a stranger to their own six-year-old pleading."

ADM filed a motion in July 2025, seeking to exclude Ledgerwood from testifying.

Ledgerwood is a former economist at the Office of Enforcement of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Court-appointed expert Jeffrey M. Wooldridge, the university distinguished professor of economics at Michigan State University, reportedly concluded AOT did not suffer economic damage from ADM's alleged actions.

Wooldridge has been involved in critiquing Ledgerwood's conclusions as part of vetting him as a witness.

The model Ledgerwood developed, according to court documents, includes:

-- futures price of corn

-- wages paid to manufacturing workers

-- electricity and natural gas prices

-- prices of byproducts of ethanol production

-- railroad transportation costs

-- storms or other severe weather in Illinois

-- gasoline price in New York Harbor

-- price of renewable identification numbers, or RINs

-- amount of ethanol and gasoline stocks in the U.S.

-- U.S. imports and exports of ethanol and the Chinese tariffs placed on them

"Plaintiffs have been fighting for 26 months, since court-appointed expert Wooldridge's first report in June 2023, against the changes he required to the model," ADM told the court last week.

"As ADM's motion recounted, their tactics included ignoring Wooldridge, accusing him of disregarding 'economic reality' and pretending that his and Ledgerwood's opinions were the same -- all before eventually conceding that changes had to be made. Plaintiffs and Ledgerwood have made plain their willingness to do and say anything for the chance to use his unreliable model to sway the jury."

ADM was critical of the so-called robustness test performed on the model by Ledgerwood, calling that test unreliable as well.

"As the motion explained, the robustness test itself is unreliable as a model, including because Ledgerwood assumed that only ADM's trading activities -- not the trading activities of all other market participants -- caused all price movements, even when others offered or sold ethanol for lower prices. In response, plaintiffs accuse ADM of having 'inexplicably ignored 80 pages' of a report in which Ledgerwood supposedly considered the activity of other traders. Yet the analysis on those pages focuses almost exclusively on ADM. Ledgerwood mentioned other traders only incidentally, without accounting for their activity in his causation analysis. He stuck to his unreliable assumption."

Read more on DTN:

"ADM Motions to Exclude Ethanol Witness," https://www.dtnpf.com/…

Todd Neeley can be reached at todd.neeley@dtn.com

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