DBCP: COMPANIES MANOEUVRE TO AVOID COMPENSATION
(Banana Trade News Bulletin, October 1996)
The protracted court case involving banana companies, chemical companies and some 40,000 plantation workers who have been rendered sterile by exposure to the banned nematicide, DBCP, has taken a new turn in recent months.
The Standard Fruit Company (Dole), for instance, has been paying very small amounts to individual workers who are usually scarcely in a position to refuse the money. In the Texas courts the company has come up with a legalistic device for not continuing with the hearing: "Forum non conveniens", in other words, their lawyers are claiming that a US court is not an appropriate forum in which people from a third country can bring a case involving a US company's actions in that country. The court ruled that the case must be heard in the country where the alleged crime took place.
Now the defendants have come up with another way of stalling: they want to bring an Israeli company (partly state-owned), Dead Sea Bromine, which manufactured tiny quantities of the active ingredient in DBCP, with them into the dock. Because the company is partly state-owned, this would mean bringing the Israeli government to court, but.... US law does not allow a foreign state to be brought to court!
(Source: Boletin de la Coordinadora de Sindicatos Bananeros de America Latina, 7/96, Siquirres, Costa Rica. )
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