Federal Court Refuses to Recognize $97 Million Nicaraguan Judgment in Pesticide Exposure Litigation
A federal court in Florida has refused to enforce a $97 million judgment obtained in a Nicaraguan court by 150 banana plantation workers who alleged that exposure to the pesticide DBCP caused their sterility. Osorio v. Dole Food Co., No. 07-22693 (S.D. Fla., decided October 20, 2009). The plaintiffs sought to enforce the award under a Florida law allowing for the recognition of out-of-country foreign money judgments. Defendants Dole Food Co. and Dow Chemical Co. contended that the Nicaraguan law under which the case was litigated, Special Law 364, violated their due process rights in a number of respects, and the court agreed, finding multiple grounds for non-recognition under the Florida statute.
Among other matters, the Nicaraguan law targeted a limited number of defendants, established irrefutable presumptions about causation, restricted defendants’ ability to introduce evidence, required significant financial deposits by defendants even before liability was determined, and granted no right of appeal. The U.S. court discussed at length the history of the Nicaraguan law and how it had been found
unconstitutional by that nation’s attorney general. The court also conducted a limited review of the scientific and medical evidence to determine that “it is scientifically and medically impossible for DBCP to cause most of the impaired sperm conditions represented in the Judgment.”
The court took issue with the damages awarded to date in Nicaraguan courts under its special law, which imposes a minimum damages award, noting that “the gross national product of Nicaragua is somewhere between $6 and 7 billion, meaning that the $2 billion in DBCP judgments rendered to date would, if enforced, increase the size of Nicaragua’s total economy by as much as 30%.”
The court also reluctantly examined the integrity of the Nicaraguan judicial system and concluded, “the substantive law under which this case was tried, Special Law 364, and the Judgment itself, purport to establish facts that do not, and cannot, exist in reality. The law under which this case was tried stripped Defendants of their basic right in any adversarial proceeding to produce evidence in their favor and rebut the plaintiffs’ claims. Finally, the judgment was rendered under a system in which political strongmen exert their control over a weak and corrupt judiciary, such that Nicaragua does not possess a ‘system of jurisprudence likely to secure an impartial administration of justice.’”
