Dole Food Co

Dole Food Co. is voluntarily recalling salads sold in the U.S. and Canada labeled "Hearts Delight" because of possible E. coli contamination. No consumers have reported being sick, though a store in Canada found E. coli during a random screening, Westlake Village-based Dole said. The salads were sold in Illinois, Indiana, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and neighboring states.

Earlier this year, Dole Food Co. won a major victory in the L.A. courts when a judge threw out lawsuits brought by Nicaraguan banana workers purportedly rendered sterile by pesticide, saying the plaintiffs' case was a product of massive fraud. Now Dole is headed back to court but this time, it's Dole that's claiming to be the victim.

In the sweltering hub of Nicaragua's once-thriving banana industry, Juan Dominguez saw an opportunity. He arrived in Chinandega in 2002, shortly after watching a CNN report about men claiming they had become sterile from exposure to DBCP, a pesticide used on banana plantations in the 1970s. Until then, Dominguez was best known as the mustachioed personal injury lawyer pictured on the backs of Los Angeles buses and had no experience in international law.

A Los Angeles judge has wiped out most of a jury verdict awarding millions of dollars to Nicaraguan field hands who applied pesticides to Dole Food Co. crops and who are now sterile. Although the decision leaves four workers with $1.58 million, it will undercut claims of an estimated 6,000 others who have sued in the United States for similar injuries suffered outside of this country. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Victoria G. Chaney overturned jury verdicts in the first U.S.

Dole Food Co. is selling land in Hawaii and California to avoid default on $350 million in bonds. The asset sales may relieve pressure on 84-year-old billionaire Chairman David Murdock to make an emergency cash infusion into the Westlake Village-based company. Credit-default swaps suggest a 74% chance of default in the next five years, according to a JPMorgan Chase & Co. valuation model.

Dole Food Co. and Fresh Del Monte Produce Inc. were fined 60.3 million euros ($82 million) by European Union regulators over claims that the banana importers fixed prices in eight countries from 2000 to 2002. Dole was fined 45.6 million euros and Fresh Del Monte is jointly responsible for a 14.7-million-euro fine along with Internationale Fruchtimport Gesellschaft Weichert & Co., the European Commission said in Brussels. Chiquita Brands International Inc. avoided a penalty of 83.

Dole Fresh Fruit Co. recalled several thousand cartons of imported cantaloupes Friday after the fruit tested positive for salmonella. The recall, which covers the eastern United States and the Canadian province of Quebec, is the second sparked by salmonella fears this week. On Wednesday, ConAgra Foods Inc. recalled its Peter Pan brand and certain batches of Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'

A Southern California pesticide company has agreed to settle a lawsuit alleging that one of the firm's products caused agricultural workers in Nicaragua to become sterile, plaintiffs' attorneys announced Sunday. Amvac Chemical Corp. has agreed to pay a total of $300,000 to 13 Nicaraguan workers who contended that they were sterilized while exposed to a pesticide called DBCP on banana plantations nearly three decades ago.

The California farm that grew the spinach linked to last year's nationwide \o7E. coli \f7outbreak, and the two companies that processed and marketed it, have settled lawsuits with the families of three women who died, two of whom had not been included in the official death toll. The attorney for the three families said Mission Organics, Natural Selection Foods and the Dole Food Co. agreed late last month to confidential settlements in the deaths of Ruby Trautz, 81, of Bellevue, Neb.

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.