Legal News

Dole Case Dismissed Due To ?Blatant Extortion? By Plaintiffs? Lawyers

By Nathan Koppel

A Los Angeles judge issued a blistering ruling yesterday, dismissing two cases brought by Nicaraguans who claim Dole exposed them to a pesticide, DBCP, which allegedly causes sterility.

But this was no ordinary dismissal. Judge Victoria Chaney tossed the suits after concluding that Nicaraguan attorneys and Los Angeles plaintiffs lawyer Juan Dominguez recruited fraudulent plaintiffs, allegedly coaxing them to fabricate their work histories. "What occurred here is not just fraud on the court but blatant extortion of defendants," Judge Chaney declared in a bench ruling issued late yesterday. (The transcript is not yet available.)

Here's an early report from Bloomberg about the ruling.

Mr. Dominguez "denies any and all wrongdoing," says Aimee Dominguez, an attorney for Mr. Dominguez. (The two are not related.) Ms. Dominguez says her client has not been able to conduct discovery into the allegations nor to respond to the charges in court. "We have basically been shut out of defending ourselves," she says.

The judge also found that U.S. and Nicaraguan lawyers conspired with Nicaraguan judges to fix cases by "manufacturing false lab reports," according to a statement issued by Dole. "The fraud on the court was blatant," Scott Edelman, a partner at Gibson Dunn, said in a statement.

Thousands of plaintiffs have won judgments against Dole in Nicaragua, but these judgments have not been enforced because the company no longer has assets in that country. Here’s an earlier LB post on the matter.

At least 16,000 Latin American workers have also filed suit in the U.S., Bloomberg reports, seeking damages against chemical companies that made DBCP and against growers that used it.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on April 24, 2009 (boomark / email).