LA judge dumps $2.4 million judgment against Dole

[Judi Lynn]

LA judge dumps $2.4 million judgment against Dole
By Steve Gorman

LOS ANGELES | Thu Jul 15, 2010 11:08pm EDT

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A California judge on Thursday tossed out a $2.4 million judgment against Dole Food Co won by six Nicaraguans claiming pesticide injuries in what the judge branded a phony case invented as part of a larger fraud conspiracy.

The November 2007 verdict she overturned in a rare proceeding after several days of testimony and oral arguments capped the first of dozens of such cases brought in California by workers from several Central American countries to go to trial.

The others, from Costa Rica, Guatemala, Panama and Honduras, have been thrown into greater doubt as well.

Thursday's decision, by the same judge who dismissed two related lawsuits in Los Angeles for the same reasons in April 2009, also undermines $2 billion in pending judgments from dozens of similar cases won by plaintiffs in Nicaraguan courts and now seeking enforcement against Dole in the United States, lawyers for both sides said.

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