Plaintiff’s lawyer claims witnesses bribed to testify on alleged fraud in Dole worker case

Plaintiffs’ lawyer alleges Dole bribed witnesses

LOS ANGELES — 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.

“The plaintiffs’ own experts testified to that,” she said.

Condie acknowledged that Dole agents have denied paying the witnesses, saying that the plaintiffs “don’t have a paper trail. What we have to rely on is ‘He said, she said.’” He also acknowledged that no receipts were kept for the alleged payments.

Condie said the payments continued for 13 months. He claimed that a key witness was brought to the Los Angeles courthouse at one point and demanded $500,000 from Dole to testify, a request which was denied. He said the witness returned to Nicaragua.

The judge said she was aware of the witness having been in the courthouse. But she said she believed he did not enter the courtroom because he was afraid to see one of the attorneys accused of engineering the fraud, Juan J. Dominguez, who was present.

Chaney has said that the witnesses were in fear for their safety.

In recent months, she has also disclosed concerns for her own safety. She said there had been threats to her and to witnesses in radio addresses in Nicaragua and that it was an attempt at witness tampering.

Chaney has said she hoped to conclude the hearing Friday. She was designated to return from the appellate court to hear the case because she presided over the original 2007 trial.

Dole lawyers have urged a speedy conclusion, saying a manhunt was under way in Nicaragua for the whistle blowers, with lawyers pressuring them to recant their testimony.