A U.S. magistrate judge in Delaware has recommended that the court transfer a suit against Occidental Chemical Corp. related to toxic pesticide exposure to New York federal court, finding a lack of jurisdiction in Delaware.

Occidental was one of six companies sued in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware by more than 200 farmworkers from Panama, Ecuador and Costa Rica, who alleged that the misuse of the pesticide dibromochloropropane on banana farms from the 1960s to the 1980s had caused them various health problems, including sterility, birth defects and an increased risk of cancer.

U.S. District Judge Richard G. Andrews dismissed all of the farmers' complaints in 2013 under Delaware's first-filed rule. But an en banc panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reversed the ruling in September.