Sterility

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.

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 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.

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.