Another Plaintiff Fraud Exposed
On Friday, a California appeals court upheld a decision that vacated a $3.3 million verdict against Dole, upholding a lower court’s finding of “deliberate and egregious misconduct” by the plaintiffs.
The suit claimed that banana farmers in Nicaragua were made sterile by pesticides used by Dole. Lawyers for the company, however, were able to disprove the allegations, the American Lawyer reports:
What convinced the judge that the Nicaraguans’ claims were bogus? Among other things, a Gibson Dunn team including Scott Edelman, Andrea Neuman and Theodore Boutrous Jr. presented evidence that plaintiffs in the cases weren’t sterile, and that some hadn’t even worked on Dole’s plantations.
The ruling comes less than a week after a judge in New York found that a $9.5 billion verdict in Ecuador against Chevron was secured through coercion, bribery, money laundering, and other misconduct. The decision will cast “a long shadow” as the plaintiffs continue to try to enforce the verdict in other jurisdictions, including Canada, Argentina, and Brazil.
