Court Sanctions Lawyers for Extortion Conspiracy Against Dole

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge has identified a broad conspiracy scheme among U.S. and Nicaraguan lawyers, individual plaintiffs, and even a Nicaraguan judge to essentially extort Dole Food Company Inc. and Dow Chemical Co. for millions of dollars.  In yesterday’s contempt hearing, Judge Victoria Chaney ordered that the defendants Dole, Dow, and others be reimbursed for all of their legal expenses related to the alleged scheme.

At the heart of the alleged conspiracy is the charge that attorneys from at least four firms, including U.S. attorneys Juan Dominguez and Antonio Hernandez Ordenana, as well as a Nicaraguan judge, brought fraudulent claims on behalf of men who purportedly were harmed and/or made sterile by Dow pesticides sprayed on Dole-affiliated banana farms in Nicaragua. The evidence indicated, however, that most of the named plaintiffs never worked on Dole farms, and none were involved with the application of the chemical.

Judge Chaney determined that the plaintiffs and their attorneys had procured several fraudulent foreign judgments “totaling in the hundreds of millions of dollars” that they were now trying to enforce in the Southern District of Florida. The total amount of the fees award, to be paid by the plaintiffs and attorneys Dominguez and Ordenana at least, is yet undetermined.