Legal News

The Dole Pesticide Case: Bananas, Sterility and Videotape

By Ashby Jones

Later today, a three-day hearing will begin out in a Los Angeles state court to determine whether to dismiss two related cases in which 11 plaintiffs have accused the Dole Fresh Fruit Co. of exposing them to a pesticide in Nicaraguan banana farms. The reason behind the possible dismissal: shenanigans by plaintiffs’ lawyers. Dole contends that two attorneys were recruiting clients to make false claims. Click here for the AP story; here for the Reuters story.

Dole claims that all but one of 11 plaintiffs had never worked on a banana farm and the men were paid and coached by Los Angeles-based attorney Juan Dominguez and a Nicaraguan colleague.

For now, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Victoria Chaney appears inclined to believe the Dole lawyers, led by Gibson Dunn’s Scott A. Edelman (not to be confused with this Scott A. Edelman).

In a recent show-cause order, Judge Chaney wrote: “The court became deeply concerned that fraud may be occurring and that it has tentacles that extend to all of the Nicaraguan (pesticide) cases pending before it.”

Dominguez did not return several messages left Monday by AP and Reuters.

Dole alleges the two attorneys paid and cajoled witnesses and plaintiffs into saying they had worked on banana plantations and been rendered sterile. The attorneys showed videos to the men depicting life on the plantations to help them tell their stories, falsified sterility documents and hid evidence that some of the men who had supposedly worked on a banana farm went on to sire children, Dole said in court documents.

A jury in November 2007 awarded $2.5 million in punitive damages to five workers, but a judge later dismissed those damages, saying they could not be used to punish a domestic corporation for injuries that occurred only in a foreign country.

Thousands of other plaintiffs have won judgments against Dole in Nicaragua, but these have not been enforced because the company no longer has any assets in that country.

Lastly, orange you glad we didn’t start this post with some corny intro about bananas?

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on April 21, 2009 (boomark / email).