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March 12, 2008 |
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DOLE FOOD: Judge Chaney Dismisses Tellez Case for US$1.58 Mil. Dole Food Company Inc. disclosed that Judge Victoria Gerrard Chaney of the Los Angeles Superior Court found for Dole in the Tellez case by dismissing all punitive damages and finding that “any punitive damages award would be so arbitrary as to be grossly excessive, and thus violative of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment” of the United States Constitution. Judge Chaney further held that “viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to plaintiffs, the evidence compels a verdict for [Dole] as a matter of law.” The plaintiffs had alleged that Dole acted with malice against workers in the use of Dow Chemical’s agricultural chemical DBCP on contracted banana farms in Nicaragua nearly 30 years ago. As a result of this and the court’s other favorable rulings on March 7, 2008, the original verdicts which totaled US$5 million against Dole have now been reduced to US$1.58 million. As reported in the Troubled Company Reporter-Latin America on Nov. 21, 2007, at a jury hearing held Nov. 14 in Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Chaney's chamber, Dole Food was asked to pay five former Nicaraguan employees US$2.5 million for punitive damages. These workers also got a US$3.2 million compensatory damages for suffering sterility due to exposure to the pesticide DBCP on Dole's banana plantations in Nicaragua. Most of the compensatory award will be paid by Dole, while the rest will come from Dow Chemical Co., which manufactured the pesticide. “We always have maintained that punitive damages are inappropriate in these cases and would violate fundamental constitutional principles,” said C. Michael Carter, Dole's executive vice president and general counsel. “The rationale of Judge Chaney’s ruling clearly appears to preclude the award of punitive damages against Dole in any of the other cases pending in California, regardless of whether the plaintiffs are from Nicaragua or any other foreign country.” As a result of these proceedings, the court found in Dole’s favor against seven of the 12 hand-picked plaintiffs in the Tellez case; and the court granted Dole’s motion for a new trial as to the claims of one of the other plaintiffs. Only the compensatory verdicts for four plaintiffs remain, subject to Dole’s appeal. Dole is committed to a fair and reasonable resolution of claims by male banana workers in Nicaragua, who meet minimum criteria consistent with the reliable science. In Honduras, Dole, worker unions and the Government of Honduras have implemented a successful program to deal with these claims. Headquartered in Westlake Village, California, Dole Food Company, Inc. -- http://www.dole.com/ -- is a producer and marketer of fresh fruit, fresh vegetables and fresh-cut flowers, and markets a line of packaged foods. The company has four primary operating segments. The fresh fruit segment produces and markets fresh fruit to wholesale, retail and institutional customers worldwide. The fresh vegetables segment contains operating segments that produce and market commodity vegetables and ready-to-eat packaged vegetables to wholesale, retail and institutional customers primarily in North America, Europe and Asia. The packaged foods segment contains several operating segments that produce and market packaged foods, including fruit, juices and snack foods. Dole's fresh-cut! flowers segment sources, imports and markets fresh-cut flowers, grown mainly in Colombia and Ecuador, primarily to wholesale florists and supermarkets in the U.S. * * * As reported in the Troubled Company Reporter-Asia on Feb. 28, 2008, Moody's Investors Service lowered Dole Food Company, Inc.'s corporate family rating and probability of default ratings to B3 from B2, and downgraded the ratings of the company's unsecured shelf filings. Moody's said the rating outlook is stable. |
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