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Dole Wins Dismissal of Nicaraguan Banana
Workers’ Lawsuits
Dole Wins
Dismissal of Nicaraguan Banana Workers’
Lawsuits
By Edvard Pettersson
(Bloomberg) -- Dole Food Co., the world’s
largest fresh fruit and vegetables producer,
persuaded a California judge to throw out
two consolidated lawsuits by purported
Nicaraguan banana workers because of lawyer
misconduct.
Judge Victoria Chaney, at a hearing
yesterday in state court in Los Angeles,
agreed with Dole that the workers’ claims
that a pesticide used in the 1970s made them
sterile should be dismissed because of a
pattern of “deliberate and egregious
misconduct” by lawyers in Nicaragua who
recruited the plaintiffs.
“What has occurred here is not just a fraud
perpetrated on this court, but a blatant
extortion of the defendants,” Chaney said.
“I cannot in good conscience allow this case
to continue.”
At least 16,000 Latin American workers have
sued in the U.S. in the past two decades
seeking damages from chemical companies that
made the pesticide dibromochloropropane, or
DBCP, and growers that used it. Nicaraguan
courts have entered more than $2 billion in
verdicts against Dole and other U.S.
companies, part of which plaintiffs’ lawyers
are seeking to have enforced in U.S. courts.
The two dismissed lawsuits were the second
and third ones Chaney intended to try as
bellwether cases that would provide guidance
for settlements in other cases. After the
first trial in 2007, which resulted in a
partial verdict for the plaintiffs, evidence
emerged of witness intimidation and
obstruction of justice, the judge said.
‘Serious Crimp’
Yesterday’s ruling will put a “serious
crimp” on efforts to enforce Nicaraguan
damages awards in U.S. courts, Scott
Edelman, a lawyer for Dole, said after the
hearing. A federal judge in Florida stayed
an enforcement action of a $98 million
Nicaraguan award to await the outcome of
this hearing, Edelman said.
Lawyers for Westlake Village,
California-based Dole argued during a
hearing that lawyers in Nicaragua recruited
poor people who had never worked on a banana
farm to file complaints, trained them to lie
and faked lab tests and employment records.
Most of Dole’s records in Nicaragua were
destroyed in the aftermath of the Sandinista
revolution, opening the door to the
fraudulent claims, the company’s lawyers
said.
Retribution Feared
Nicaraguan witnesses for Dole whose faces
were hidden and whose voices were distorted
to prevent identification said in videotaped
statements shown in court that they feared
retribution if it became known they provided
information to company investigators.
Michael Axline, a lawyer for the plaintiffs,
had no comment on the ruling. The judge said
Axline’s firm was not at fault for the fraud
that was committed by lawyers in Nicaragua.
Chaney said she will refer the case to the
appropriate state bar associations and to
prosecutors.
More than 40 related DBCP cases with
thousands of plaintiffs from Costa Rica,
Guatemala, Panama, Honduras and the Ivory
Coast are pending in Los Angeles.
The cases are Mejia v. Dole Food, BC340049,
and Rivera v. Dole Food, BC379820,
California Superior Court, Los Angeles
County (Los Angeles).
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