Lawyers accuse each other of fraud during closing arguments in Dole banana workers case

Both sides allege fraud in Dole pesticide case

LOS ANGELES — Lawyers for Dole Foods and six Nicaraguan plaintiffs suing the company accused each side of fraud Monday in heated closing arguments as a judge ponders whether to dismiss a $2.3 million award to the purported banana workers.

Judge Victoria Chaney threw out a similar case last year after testimony that plaintiffs pretended to have been workers on Dole banana farms in the 1970s and faked lab tests to show they were rendered sterile by pesticides.

She has expressed concern about maintaining the integrity of the justice system and sending a message that fraud will not be tolerated.

The Dole defense team on Monday noted that plaintiffs’ lawyer Steve Condie never called the six plaintiffs to testify in the current hearing and hasn’t even met them.

Condie accused Dole of bribing whistle-blower witnesses and conspiring to remove plaintiffs’ lawyers from the case. He acknowledged there was has been some fraud but said his six clients were “clean.”

Dole attorneys Scott Edelman and Theodore Boutrous played videotaped excerpts of depositions and trial testimony by the six plaintiffs, some of whom said they couldn’t remember details about working on the banana farms because it has been so long.

One man who said he worked at a farm for 10 years acknowledged he couldn’t remember what the farm looked like and recalled the names of only two co-workers.

The Dole attorneys said all six plaintiffs submitted sperm test results from labs known to have committed fraud in the case.

Chaney, who has been elevated to the California 2nd District Court of Appeals, returned to Los Angeles Superior Court to hear Dole’s motion to throw out the $2.3 million verdict. She said she would try to issue a decision later this week.