Jury to consider punitive damages against Dole

Dole Foods of Westlake Village should be liable for civil punishment for concealing health dangers posed to workers by a pesticide used on its Nicaraguan banana plantations 30 years ago, jurors in a Los Angeles courtroom decided Wednesday.

The decision clears the way for punitive damages in addition to the $3.2 million that jurors awarded the workers earlier this week to compensate them for their injuries. The workers alleged they had been rendered sterile by the pesticide DBCP -- now banned in the United States -- which was used on Dole plantations.

The jury in the courtroom of Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Victoria G. Chaney also on Wednesday fixed damages for Dow Chemical, the producer of the pesticide, at about $754,000 total for the six workers involved, according to Dow lawyer Gennaro Filice.

Chaney told jurors to return Nov. 14 to begin hearing arguments about punitive damages against Dole. Punitive damages in California are designed to punish wrongdoers, and are generally considered to be capped at about 10 times actual damages.

Dow’s portion of the case was governed by Michigan law, which caps liability under formulas based on how much damage -- according to jurors -- the workers were determined to have sustained. Jurors earlier ruled that DBCP was a defective product.

Already, courts in Nicaragua have levied more than $600 million in judgments against Dole and other companies, according to lawyers for the workers -- judgments that have proved impossible to collect so far. The verdicts announced Monday marked the first case of foreign farmworkers prevailing in a U.S. court against Dole and Dow over harm from DBCP.

Four more lawsuits are pending in Los Angeles in which thousands of workers from Costa Rica, Honduras, Guatemala and Panama allege that they, too, were injured by the use of DBCP on plantations. Lawyers for workers say tens of thousands have sued worldwide over the chemical.

Dole officials called the verdicts unjust and said they would appeal. They pointed out that jurors rejected the allegations of six other Nicaraguan workers.

john.spano@latimes.com