Andrea Neuman of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher made a name for herself exposing large-scale misconduct on the part of plaintiffs lawyers suing Dole Food Company Inc. over its pesticide use in Latin America. This week, she finished off nearly all the remaining cases in a more old-fashioned way, winning a ruling that Dole’s opponents waited too long to sue.
In an eight-page decision issued on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Richard Andrews in Delaware threw out a pair of cases brought on behalf of about 2,700 banana plantation workers from Panama, Ecuador, Guatemala, and Costa Rica. The plaintiffs claimed that Dole’s use of the pesticide dibromochloropropane (DBCP) left them suffering from a host of medical problems, ranging from infertility to loss of vision and renal failure. But Andrews held that the cases are time-barred, rejecting an argument by plaintiffs counsel that parallel litigation brought 20 years ago had tolled the statute of limitations.
