Legal News

LA judge finds banana lawsuits a little rotten

By Richard Binder

For more than a decade, dozens of lawsuits have been filed against Dole and many other defendants on behalf of thousands of workers who claim that they became sterile after being exposed to DBCP, or dibromochloropropane, on banana farms roughly 30 years ago in various countries, most of them in Central America.

Now, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Victoria Chaney, who is overseeing most of the banana lawsuits in the nation, alleges that at least two other banana lawsuits filed by Dominguez of the Dominguez Law Group in Los Angeles "stink of the potential fraud" recently alleged by Dole Food Co., according to court papers.

On March 11,  Chaney ordered both sides to explain why two lawsuits brought on behalf of dozens of Nicaraguan workers should not be dismissed as a terminating sanction against Dominguez and the plaintiffs for misconduct. Among the evidence that has emerged in recent months indicating potential fraud: plaintiffs who had never worked on a banana farm, employment documents that were falsified and a Nicaraguan radio broadcast on which Dominguez has told listeners not to cooperate in the case, according to Chaney's order.

Click here for the full NLJ story.

Full post as published by Legal Pad | LA on March 23, 2009 (boomark / email).