Federal Appeals Court Sends Banana Plantation Torture Suit to Guatemala

The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals has determined that a district court did not abuse its discretion by deciding that the Alien Tort Claims Act and Torture Victim Protection Act claims of seven Guatemalan banana plantation workers would best be heard in a Guatemalan court. Aldana v. Del Monte Fresh Produce N.A., Inc., No 07-15471 (11th Cir., decided August 13, 2009). The litigation arose from a 1999 labor dispute in Guatemala during which a number of trade union workers were allegedly roughed up by a private security force purportedly hired by defendant’s subsidiary, which owned the large banana plantation involved in the dispute.

A circuit court panel majority agreed with the district court’s forum non conveniens analysis, ruling that it did not err by giving preclusive effect to prior state court findings on these issues and in finding that Guatemala’s courts were adequate and that “the plaintiffs’ choice of forum was the only private interest factor weighing in the appellants’ favor.” The dissenting judge opined that the district court erred “in finding that the state court’s consideration of the private interest factors had a preclusive effect in this case,” and that it abused its discretion in weighing the private and public interest factors at issue. According to the dissenting judge, the district court misinterpreted the state court’s factual findings and erred by “only considering the relative advantages of the Guatemalan forum” and failing to “consider any of the private interest factors which may have weighed in favor of suit in the United States.”