Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse of Central Texas

Associated Press
July 9, 2010

A lawyer for plaintiffs seeking to turn the tables on Dole Food Co. told a judge Wednesday that the giant firm bribed whistle blowers to testify about an alleged fraud involving purported workers on Dole banana plantations in Nicaragua.

Attorney Steve Condie represents plaintiffs who won a lawsuit against Dole and stand to lose their $2.3 million award because of fraud claims.

In arguments to Judge Victoria Chaney, Condie said Dole paid to relocate two unidentified witnesses to Costa Rica, put them up at luxury hotels and got them well paying jobs, providing them with a total of $1,500 a month in cash for living expenses.

The two witnesses, referred by Condie as John Doe 17 and 18, "lived high on the hog in Costa Rica for a year receiving almost $100,000 in benefits," said Condie, who added that the men said their lives had been threatened in Nicaragua if they testified.

Outside court, Dole attorney Scott Edelman acknowledged the witnesses were relocated to Costa Rica, placed in jobs on farms and given housing and money for expenses while they were getting settled.

The witnesses eventually testified to a conspiracy allegedly engineered by two lawyers from Nicaragua and Los Angeles to recruit men to say they were former banana workers and had been rendered sterile by exposure to pesticides on Dole plantations.

Testimony at previous hearings showed that most of the men were not sterile — some had children after the relevant time period — and most had not worked at banana plantations. The judge, who has since been elevated to the 2nd District Court of Appeal, dismissed one lawsuit and is now considering throwing out the award in the trial over which she presided.

Condie, a Northern California lawyer who stepped into the case recently, is attempting to prove that Dole, not the plaintiffs, committed fraud.

He argued that the plaintiffs' sperm test results were not faked, and that those who had children may have recovered from sterility after their exposure to the chemical DCBP.

"Mr. Condie, I'm sorry but I'm not buying into that," said Chaney.

The judge said she learned during the trial that "those people who have zero sperm stay at zero sperm." In rare instances, she said there was some minor recovery a short time later, but not after years.

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