Dbcp Chemical

The unraveling of multimillion-dollar Los Angeles cases alleging that Nicaraguan men had been sterilized by pesticide exposure is now threatening to upend hundreds of other claims in U.S. courts, as judges examine charges that plaintiffs' lawyers orchestrated an extraordinary international fraud. At the center of the claims is the pesticide DBCP and allegations that workers in banana plantations in Central America and Africa were harmed by exposure to the chemical.

Nearly 700 Ivory Coast farmworkers alleging that they became sterile from exposure to a U.S.-made pesticide can't claim to be victims of genocide because the producers didn't intend harm, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday. The pesticide, known as DBCP for dibromochloropropane, has been banned in the United States since 1979. The Africans' suit against Amvac Chemical Corp. of Newport Beach, Dole Food Co. of Westlake Village, Dow Chemical Co. and Shell Oil Co.

THE people crammed into the stifling basketball gym. They filled the court, lined the walls and tumbled beyond the doors onto the sun-blistered streets. They had gathered to hear a promise of justice. Many had spent their lives toiling on banana plantations that U.S. companies operated in this region some 30 years ago. By day, the workers had harvested bunches of fruit to ship to North American tables.

Former Nicaraguan banana workers signed a petition Wednesday to fire their legal team of U.S. and Nicaraguan lawyers and negotiate directly with companies they accused of using a harmful pesticide. Victorino Espinales, who leads workers exposed in the 1970s to the pesticide known as DBCP, told the Associated Press that they didn't believe their lawyers could win a case soon to be argued in Los Angeles County Superior Court.

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.

A worker from Honduras testified in a Los Angeles courtroom Tuesday that he and his wife tried for a decade to have children but failed to conceive after he went to work on a banana plantation where the pesticide DBCP was used. "As a man I'm worthless," Benancio Lizandro Espinoza said with the aid of a translator when asked how he felt when he found out he was sterile. Espinoza is one of a dozen banana farm workers who are suing Dole Fresh Fruit Co. and Standard Fruit Co.

A Los Angeles jury on Monday awarded $3.2 million to six Nicaraguan farmworkers who had sued Dole Food Co. Inc., arguing they had been rendered sterile some three decades ago by the international corporate giant's application of a banned pesticide on the plantations where they worked. Jurors return today to consider whether Dole, and codefendant Dow Chemical Co., should be punished with more monetary damages.

Dole Foods of Westlake Village should be liable for civil punishment for concealing health dangers posed to workers by a pesticide used on its Nicaraguan banana plantations 30 years ago, jurors in a Los Angeles courtroom decided Wednesday. The decision clears the way for punitive damages in addition to the $3.2 million that jurors awarded the workers earlier this week to compensate them for their injuries.

In an extraordinary public mea culpa, a top Dole Food Co. executive Wednesday pleaded with jurors considering punitive damages against the firm to separate the "old Dole" from what he called the enlightened "new Dole." C.

A Los Angeles jury ordered Dole Food Co. on Thursday to pay five Nicaraguan banana plantation workers $2.5 million as punishment for concealing the dangers of a pesticide that rendered them unable to have children. The verdict, which awarded far less in punitive damages than some observers expected, was hailed as a victory by attorneys on both sides. It follows a Nov. 5 jury award of $3.2 million in compensatory damages. The five-month trial marked the first time a U.S.