Nearly three decades of legal struggle came to a head in a Los Angeles courtroom Thursday, as a trial began in a case pitting impoverished Latino field hands against two of America's largest corporations.
Dole Food Co. knowingly exposed Nicaraguan banana workers three decades ago to a pesticide made by Dow Chemical Co. that caused permanent sterility, an attorney for the men said in opening arguments in Los Angeles County Superior Court.
"The workers were not told that [the pesticide] may affect their fertility," Duane Miller, a Sacramento attorney, told jurors. "They weren't told until the '90s -- and they weren't told by Dow or Dole."
Attorneys for Dow, which is based in Midland, Mich., and Dole, which is based in Westlake Village, argued that the companies used the chemical responsibly and that the workers had not been exposed to enough to cause harm.
"We're talking about no dangerous exposure to the plaintiffs," said Rick McKnight, the lead attorney for Dole. He waved a silver tablespoon in the air to represent the amount of the chemical applied per banana tree. The pesticide "certainly wasn't the cause of their sterility."
The case marks the first time that an American company has gone before a jury to face accusations that the pesticide, called DBCP, poisoned field hands in banana plantations in another country.
Since the 1980s, attorneys have filed civil lawsuits on behalf of more than 30,000 workers on plantations in Africa, Latin America and the Philippines.
Although some of those lawsuits have settled, none has been presented to jurors. Twelve workers have alleged sterilization in Thursday's case, though thousands of additional workers in Nicaragua are preparing to sue.
The case is also one of the few in which an American company has been sued in the U.S. for alleged damages occurring overseas. Typically, such lawsuits are referred back to their country of origin.
Coincidentally, one other case involving alleged damages committed abroad is now on trial. In that case, in federal court, an Alabama coal company is alleged to have worked with paramilitaries in Colombia to kill union officials. Company officials have denied the charge.
The cases have attracted the attention of legal scholars and plaintiff's attorneys, who have struggled to determine an equitable system of justice in a world where commerce is global, but courts are local.
