Deere & Company has reached a $99 million settlement to a four-year legal battle with farmers concerning “right to repair” of the company’s tractors and other agricultural equipment.
Filed April 6 in U.S. District Court, the settlement denies any wrongdoing by Deere in the antitrust case in which plaintiffs alleged the company denied them access to diagnostic tools and other resources to repair their own equipment or have parties other than Deere dealers do so. Instead, they claimed, they had to have the repairs done through Deere dealers at a higher cost, alleging that Deere has a monopoly on such repair services.
The settlement to the class-action lawsuit requires that the case be dismissed and establishes a fund to pay members of the class who had large agricultural equipment serviced at Deere dealerships between January 20, 2018, and the date the settlement is approved.
The agreement also requires Deere to provide owners, lessors and independent repair shops with the digital tools required for maintenance, diagnosis and repair of Deere large agricultural equipment.
The settlement was reached through mediation with the plaintiffs, who filed their preliminary approval of the agreement.
The next step is for the court to hold a final settlement approval hearing and approve the settlement.
The original lawsuits were filed in federal courts in 2022 and later consolidated in the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of Illinois, Western Division. It has been presided over by Judge Iain D. Johnston.
Deere said it is ready to move forward and put the case behind it. It also promised to make the resources needed to repair its equipment available to customers, including tools, manuals and diagnostic software. The company will do so through its John Deere Operations Center Pro Service, which “is designed to enhance customers' ability to care for their equipment how and when they want,” Caldwell said.
Caldwell added that the “settlement reaffirms Deere's commitment to customer choice of how they want their equipment supported and access to the tools that enable it."
Meanwhile, Deere still faces a lawsuit brought by the Federal Trade Commission and attorneys general of multiple states on January 15, 2025, over right to repair allegations.
“The FTC’s lawsuit seeks to stop Deere’s anticompetitive conduct by ordering, among other remedies, that Deere make available to owners of Deere large tractors and combines, as well as independent repair providers, access to its fully functional Service Advisor repair tool and any other repair resources available to authorized dealers,” according to the agency.
An attempt by Deere to have the FTC case dismissed was denied June 9, 2025, by the same judge presiding over the class action suit Deere just settled. Deere argues that its business practices are lawful, and it has not broken any laws.
In August of 2025, Deere launched its Operations Center Pro Service, a digital support tool for customers of the company’s ag, turf, construction and forestry equipment portfolio. It replaces John Deere Customer Service Advisor.
“The launch of Operations Center Pro Service is a significant milestone that adds to John Deere’s existing tools, and it reaffirms our longstanding commitment to empowering customers to choose how they repair their equipment,” said Caldwell at the time of the tool's release. “Importantly, our development of these tools reaffirms John Deere’s support of customer self-repair. We view continuously enhancing self-repair as consistent with our mission to ensure John Deere customers have the best machine ownership experience possible.”
For the pros and cons of right to repair, check out these episodes of The Dirt:
- Video: A Closer Look at Equipment Right to Repair — In this episode of The Dirt, host Bryan Furnace talks with Tyler Robertson, CEO of Diesel Laptops and an advocate for equipment right to repair.
- Video: Construction Equipment Industry Weighs in on Right to Repair — In this episode of The Dirt, Daniel Fisher with AED lays out manufacturers' and dealers' concerns about legislation in Congress and some states.
